


I'll Pack My Goods for the Arkansas Woods

by lagardère (laurore), laurore



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Backwoods Jonsa, Dark!Jon, F/M, Sansa stubbornly standing up to everyone, Sansa-centric, Winter's Bone AU, including Jon, some violence, weird amalgamations of book and show canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2020-05-01 16:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 97,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19181713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurore/pseuds/lagard%C3%A8re, https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurore/pseuds/laurore
Summary: When Sansa's brother goes missing, it falls to her to defend the house and the woods against the greed of the Boltons and Freys.All of this would be much easier if she could fight fire with fire, and there's a saying in the valley: that all the Starks are a little wild, and all the Targaryens are a little mad.Her cousin Jon just happens to be both.





	1. Home

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go... again. This story was originally posted between July and November of 2017. 
> 
> Reminder that you don't need to have seen "Winter's Bone" - the overall mood is mostly "Southern backcountry".
> 
> I'd made an abridged playlist of some of the songs that readers had sent me for this story, you can find it on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6T9S8VBJaV9sYl31p1HjjT).
> 
> A few songs if you'd rather avoid a full playlist:  
> [Pretty Polly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g8BV6zrVBs)  
> [The boy who wouldn't hoe corn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTQi-xdD6CI)  
> [Will the circle be unbroken](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sPc8ahc7iI)  
> (and the [Bioshock Infinite version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F1l6xXLSI0), because I love it a lot)  
> This is where the title comes from: [Whole World Round](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ9I9Yu26mY)
> 
> Indebted to [austrechild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/austrechild/profile), [alittlestardustcaught](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlestardustcaught/profile) and Louise for beta-readings. A special debt towards [PalominoOnCrutches](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PalominoOnCrutches/profile), who went over this story to make it sound a little less British.

“They have a will and it looks sound,” the young lawyer says. “It was signed and...”

“My father would never have left the house to the Boltons.”

Sansa has managed to put up an appearance of unwavering calm since the lawyer arrived, but she's finding it harder and harder not to bolt. She doesn't like his open stare, how it lingers on her hand-me-downs (faded jeans, tucked into mud-splattered boots; a grey oversized sweater that could hold two of her). When his eyes return to her face, to her pale blue eyes and to her bright red hair, twisted into a haphazard bun, it's easy to guess what he's thinking. _Young_ and _alone_ and _desperate_.

“It wasn't your father,” he says. “It was your brother Robb. There's witnesses, too. Two of the Freys. Bolton himself. Your uncle, Ed.”

“Ed,” she repeats. “Ed Tully.”

“Yeah. Apparently your uncle was there when your brother drew the will. He signed as a witness.”

“We don't know for sure that Robb's dead,” she says. “He could still come back.”

“Well, he'll have to come back fast. Unless there's a legal hold-up, they'll be taking possession of the house by the end of the month.”

“The end of the month!”

Sansa staggers. At knee-level, something comes to rest against her leg. In this house, it could be one of two things, a dog or a child. Looking down, she sees that it's her little brother Rickon, with his dirty-blond curls and his feral eyes. She reaches down absently to pet his head.

“It's our home. They can't take it from us.”

“Beg your pardon miss, they can and they will,” the lawyer says.

She tries to remember his name. It would give her something to appeal to - a shred of humanity beyond his folder-bearing, greasy-collared persona. But she wasn't paying attention when he introduced himself. She'd been too distracted by how incongruous his presence was, in the surrounding landscape of barren mountains and barren trees. The moment he stepped out of his car, he'd sunk ankle-deep into a puddle of melted snow. He's a big guy, with smooth, round cheeks and beetle-black eyes, very bright. She can tell that he's not from around these parts, though he's probably not from the city, either.

“And if I find Robb,” she says. “If I bring him back.”

“If you can convince him, I suppose...”

Judging from his tone, he doesn't think she'll manage. His line of reasoning is easy enough to follow: Robb ran off because he didn't want to marry one of the Frey girls, because he'd met a girl of his own, a stranger. Not only will it be hard to convince him to come back, provided that she can get in touch with him, but his return wouldn't go down well with the Freys, especially if they've had a hand in securing the land for the Boltons.

“I'll do it,” she says. “I'll convince him.”

He nods, once. Something like pity flashes across his features.

“If you need advice,” he says, taking a hesitant step forward.

Inside the house, one of the dogs begins to bark. It must be Shaggydog, because Rickon promptly leaves her side, scuttling back into the house. The dog's barking causes the lawyer to pause. He's holding something - a business card. _A business card._ Sansa's disgust must show, because he doesn't try to come any further. Instead, he puts the card down right there on the beaten earth.

“My number's on there,” he says. “But you can also reach me at the town hall on Tuesdays. Ask for Sam Tarly. I used to know your cousin... That's why I asked to be the one to come and see you. Your cousin would have wanted me to help.”

“Which cousin?” Sansa asks, wondering if the guy is trying to set up some lousy joke. _Ha, ha. I'd forgotten. You're all cousins around here, aren't you?_

“Oh. Jon. Jon Snow? We went to high school together. We were really good friends.”

Sansa raises her eyebrows.

“He used to talk about you a lot,” Sam says. “All of you. He said you were like brothers and sisters to him. ... Well. I'll get going. But if I can do something, you should... You should call me.”

She watches as he trundles back to his car, her face expressionless. It's only when the car has disappeared down the drive that she finally sinks to the ground and allows herself a minute of sitting there on the dusty floorboards, staring unseeing at the horizon, wondering what in the world she's supposed to do next.

 

 

 

 

They cut off the phone months ago, around the time Robb and her mother went missing. Sansa tries not to focus on that - the fact that her mother vanished at the same time as her brother - because it makes it less likely that Robb might simply have run off with a girl. Why would Catelyn have followed her son, leaving Sansa to care for her three younger siblings? Catelyn would have known that Sansa didn't have it in her, and sure enough, about a week after she'd moved back in to look after Arya and Bran and Rickon, Arya had bailed, too, in the middle of yet another one of these violent rows with her older sister, which their mother used to be so good at breaking up.

Now, when Sansa needs to place a call, she has to walk over to the neighbors’, and knock on the door and hope that it'll be Davos who answers.  
So she goes, and prays to no one in particular that Davos won't be down by the lake, despite the fact that his truck isn't out front. And when the door opens and Melisandre shows up, she hides her unease behind a smile.

“Hey, Mel. Can I use your phone?”

“Sansa dear,” Melisandre says. “You'd better come in. I'll give you a slice of pie, warm from the oven.”

“Thanks. I just need to use the phone. I left the boys at home.”

_Don't eat anything she gives you_ , Robb had told her once. She never managed to find out if it was a joke or not, if Melisandre is really a witch, or if Robb was pulling her leg. But the woman makes her uncomfortable all the same. Not so much because of her appearance - her long hair the color of ripe cherries and her high cheekbones and the faint glow that seems to emanate from her skin, as if she were impervious to the roughness of life in these mountains. No, it's something to do with what Melisandre knows, or presumes to know, about Sansa herself. As if she'd seen her whole life story at a glance the moment they met, and every time they talk, or whenever Sansa feels Melisandre's eyes on her, she can tell that the woman is dangling this knowledge like a carrot on a stick. _I could tell you every mistake you'll ever make, every wrong turn in your life._

What Sansa would like to know, instead, is what kind of wrong turn Melisandre took, that she ended up here, so obviously out of place and yet so content with her ugly house and her stern husband, and their four horses and their little fishing boat by the lake.

"What did that boy want?" Melisandre asks, setting the kettle to boil before Sansa has had a chance to say that no, she doesn't have time for tea. Besides, loathe as she is to admit it, she likes Melisandre's teas with their strange, spicy smells, and the warmth will tide her over for the remainder of the day.

"He's a lawyer," Sansa says, picking up the phone on its cracked plastic case. "They say they've got Robb's will. I need to find him before they can use it."

It's no use trying to hide the truth from Melisandre. In all likelihood, most of the valley already knows why Sam Tarly visited the Starks. _Or what's left of them, you know. The pretty redhead, the cripple and the wild one._

"How are you kids doing, back there? Got enough to eat?"

"We're doing fine."

"I'll wrap up that pie for you," Melisandre says, as if Sansa hadn't spoken, or as if she's heard that reply for what it was - a bold-faced lie. She leaves the room, whispering something about foil.

Sansa flattens the piece of torn paper on which she's jotted down her uncle's number.

Four rings, five. "Yes?"

"Uncle Ed? It's Sansa."

A beat.

"Sansa. How are you? How are the boys?"

So he knows about Arya leaving. That, or he's forgotten about Arya entirely, which she wouldn't put past him.

"We're fine. I'm calling because... A lawyer came to the house, this morning. He said something about a will? Robb's will?"

At the other end of the line, she hears him exhale, very slowly, as if he were weighting what he'll say next. She tries to picture him as she saw him last, at some family gathering or other, her mother or her aunt's birthday. He has red hair like hers but his mouth is embittered and his cheeks slant sharply like they've been sanded off.

"Yes. Your brother was trying to calm down the Freys, after that whole... wedding thing. They had him... they had us both write our wills. It was a sort of... peace offering."

"You mean they forced you to write your will? Before Robb left? They let him leave?"

Ed draws another shaky breath. She can see him very well now, uneasy because of some guilt he won't admit to, and vaguely disapproving, too, because he resents her for bringing it to the surface.

"I'll call you soon, okay? I have to go back to work, I only dropped by to... I'll call you. Let me know if you need anything. If I can give you a little money to help you with..."

"Enough money to buy back the house?" Sansa says, ice-cold. "That's if they'll sell it to us, and I'm pretty sure they won't."

She hangs up. There's no trace of Melisandre - she must have found herself something to do in the house in order to give Sansa some privacy. Still, Sansa creeps to the door leading to the living, to check that Melisandre isn't eavesdropping. Once she's certain to be alone, she returns to the phone and dials another number. This one she knows by heart.

_Please, let him pick up. Please. Not her._

"Yes?"

Sansa fists her hand in her sweater and takes a painful swallow. She doesn't speak. The woman at the other end lets out a little huff of annoyance.  
"Who is this? ... If this is a game, it's in poor taste. ... It's Sansa, isn't it? You've got some nerve, girl. If you think he wants to hear from you, you're wrong. He doesn't ask about you. He doesn't think about you. What a clever little slut you must have thought you were. Digging your nails into another woman's husband's... Is this what my sister taught you? To throw yourself at married men?"

Sansa slams the phone down on its case, her cheeks burning.

"Something the matter, dear?"

She turns around to find Melisandre watching her, leaning against the doorframe.

"Thank you," she says. "For the phone. I'll go back now."

"You know you can come in sometimes, phone your friends back south. It must have been hard, to drop everything to come back here. I'm sure your aunt was sad to see you go."

Sansa can still hear Lysa's tirade in her mind, crude and shrill and unmistakably true. _What a clever little slut you must have thought you were._

"Thanks,” she says. “But it's fine.”

She looks around at the messy kitchen, with its smell of apple pie and masala chai, at the bleak landscape that she can glimpse through the window, grey trees, grey snow, the distant black line of a telephone pole.

“I'm home now,” she adds. “Who would I call?”

 

 

 

 

Margaery was the most popular girl in high school when Sansa was still in junior high. Outgoing, funny, wickedly clever. And beautiful, of course, though not in a conventional way. She has a thin whip of a slanted smile and eyes that sparkle with mirth. Sansa and her became fast friends on the day they met, when they realized that they'd both been dating the same boy.

Margaery went on to marry him, straight out of high school. Sansa had expressed more alarm than jealousy. By that point, Joffrey had revealed himself to be a narrow-minded brute, unless he'd been all along and she'd failed to see it. Margaery didn't care. She wasn't marrying him for love. The Lannisters own the biggest factory in the area, and the family has a tendency to produce a mayor every eight years. When Joffrey got caught up in the wrong kind of fight and ended up dead on their doorstep, dropped off by an unidentified car, Margaery mourned him for a month and then became engaged to his younger brother Tommen. Tommen was seventeen at the time, and looked closer to fourteen.

Whenever Sansa visits Margaery, she remembers with no small amount of surprise that this could have been her, that she could have married Joffrey and moved into an actual house, tacky as it may be, with its too-high ceilings and its many fireplaces and the pool table in the cellar. She'd have four warehouses and cattle and a blond Lannister sleeping beside her in a king-sized bed. Not keeping her warm, exactly - the only warm thing about Joffrey had been his temper. Sansa is relieved that she didn't have to mourn him. She's not sure she could have faked it well enough to convince anyone.

Margaery opens the door in a tight lime-green sweater and pale blue jeans, her feet bare on the floorboards, her hair mostly out of its usual rose-shaped clip.

“I heard,” she says, and opens her arms. “Come here, baby girl.”

Sansa falls against her with undisguised relief. It's only once they're inside and she's got her head on Margaery's lap that she thinks to ask, “Who told you?”

“News like this travel fast,” Margaery says. “Myrcella called me. She heard it from her uncle - he had dinner with old Frey last night.”

“That old codger,” Sansa mutters.

“What're you gonna do, Sans'? Do you think they could have faked it?”

“No,” she frowns. “But they could have forced him to sign it.”

Margaery rubs at the slight crinkle between Sansa's brows with the tip of a finger. “I'm sorry this is happening to you,” she says. “After what went down at your aunt's...”

“That's not important,” Sansa says, with as much determination as she can muster. “I have to find Robb. They have no proof that he's dead.”

“Or they do, and they're not showing it,” Margaery says softly. “What do you think? Do you think he could still be alive?”

Sansa hesitates. “I want him to be,” she admits. “It was easier to pretend that he was, that he'd just eloped or something. But now I don't have a choice. I can't just wait for them to kick us out. Where would we go?”

“Davos and Mel might help. Or your uncle, your mother's brother, the one who lives on the other side of the valley?”

“Ed?” Sansa scoffs. “Ed's not capable of raising a kid, let alone two.”

“You could try to find the girl,” Margaery suggests. “The one they say your brother was gonna marry. Jill? Jeyne?”

“Jeyne. Yeah, I'll try.” Sansa shifts onto her stomach and groans, her head buried between her arms. “I was thinking of taking on that waitressing job at the road stop again. I guess that's not gonna happen.”

“What about your brother's friends? Wouldn't they know anything? What about Theon?”

“Most of the time these days, Theon doesn't even know his name”, Sansa mumbles. “He's high off his head, 24/7.”

“Yeah, but he does it at the Boltons. He might have heard something,” Margaery points out.

“If it comes to that.” With a sigh, Sansa pulls herself up and attempts to gather her unruly hair. “I'll go see Jon,” she says.

Margaery gives her a quizzical look. “Jon,” she repeats. “You sure you want to do that, Birdie?”

Sansa shoves her back on the bed with both hands, impervious to her friend's indignant screech.

“Don't call me that."

_I'm not that girl anymore. The “pretty little bird” from high school, with her songs and her stupid dreams._

Margaery's smile fades. “I mean it though. We're well past the age where we give passes to weird guys for being cute, right? And your cousin is weird alright, despite the whole... You know. Sexy scowl, dark-curls-in-the-eyes look.”

“He doesn't look like that anymore,” Sansa says. “He ties it back. It makes him look older.”

“You've seen him? Recently? Why didn't you say?”

Margaery doesn't sound suspicious, but Sansa feels uneasy all the same.

“After I came back, he... Told me to come over. Said he'd take in Arya and the boys. If I wanted to leave.”

“Ygritte ready to take on three kids? Gosh, it's even worse that two of them aren't kids anymore. I'd have trouble raising a baby, let alone two teenagers that aren't mine.”

“Ygritte ain’t around anymore. Maybe she split, I don't know. I said no.”

Margaery takes her hand. “Girl, sometimes you've got to accept help when it's given willingly.”

“I won't have them raised by a Targaryen."

“Oh, he's a Stark, too," Margaery says. "There's no doubt about that. I can remember him hanging around with Robb... They looked like brothers, these two. But I get what you mean. If all the Targaryens are a little mad and all the Starks are a little wild... It's a strange mix in the one man. Have you heard the story about his foreman? That happened when you were away, I think. What’s his name... Thorne?”

“The one who hanged himself?”

“Yes.” Margaery hesitates. “There’s some say that Jon did it. That he strangled him and made it look like he'd killed himself.”

“Who said that?” Sansa says, pulling her hand from Margaery's grasp. “The Lannisters? I keep forgetting you're one of them.”

“I'm just looking out for you,” Margaery protests. “You're the one who was acting all suspicious because he’s a Targaryen. How did that meeting go, then, him extending a hand and you spitting on it?”

“Not good,” Sansa says, and before Margaery can get a proper look at her face, she rises from the bed and retrieves her sweater from where it fell on the carpet, quickly pulling it over her feather-soft t-shirt. All her clothes are like that – faded and colorless, neutralized by one too many washes.

“He'll talk to you, though, right?” Margaery says. “If someone knows where your brother is, it's gotta be Jon or Theon.”

Margaery doesn't add “or you,” though she could have. Sansa is grateful for the omission. Wondering why Robb hasn't gotten in touch with her would be a shortcut to pawing at the frozen ground in search of his lifeless body.

“He'll talk to me,” she says, with a determination she doesn't feel.

Margaery nods. “You know I'm here if you need me. If you need me to go with you, I will. Or if you just want to talk about it.”

“Yeah,” Sansa says. “I know.” She holds out her arms and lets Margaery hug her, smelling Tommen's pinewood shower gel in the hollow of her neck, her nose rubbing against silk-soft skin. “Thank you,” she mutters.

The thing is, there aren't many subjects that she couldn't discuss with Margaery - when she had sex for the first time, she'd walked three miles to a payphone to be able to give her a detailed account, and when she returned from her stay at her aunt's, the previous summer, she'd told Margaery everything that had happened (or not happened, or almost happened) with her aunt's husband.

But she can't discuss Jon, not anymore - not since that last visit in the fall.

_You know what they say._ And she might have been less harsh with him if this had been any other time, rather than the endpoint of her shameful flight from her aunt's house, with the bags still cluttered in the back of her car parked out front of his house. _Targaryens, they got the devil in them._

She just has to close her eyes to hear it again, that rumble against the shell of her ear as his knee pushes her legs apart.

_How's this then? Targaryen enough for you?_


	2. Forest

When their father died, Robb divided the woods somewhere along the middle, leaving one half to Jon, and keeping the other for himself and his siblings.

That decision didn’t go down particularly well with their mother. Sansa has memories of heated conversations between Catelyn and her eldest son, which they'd tried without much success to keep behind closed doors. Catelyn accused Robb of ripping off his brothers and sisters, of breaking up their inheritance. Robb held his ground. If their aunt Lyanna had lived, he argued, she would have been well within her right to claim part of the woods, especially if her brother was to keep the house. That Jon's mother had died young didn’t change a thing.

And so the Starks kept one half of the woods and Jon the other. Though Sansa doesn't know the forest as well as her sister Arya, she can still tell where their part of the woods gives way to Jon's. This knowledge relies upon superstition rather than a keen observation of her surroundings, so that if someone were to ask her how she knew, she could only say, "this is Jon's wood, because it feels like him – the yellow-grey stones are like him, and the silent, fleet-footed creatures that you don't see, and the trees that rarely ever move, unless it's to shudder and fall."

When you reach the northern end of the woods, things change. Suddenly you can hear the groaning and screeching of the lumberyard, the barking of dogs, the loud voices of men signaling to each other. Jon’s house stands at some distance from the mill, a long wooden block with a sheltered porch, two chairs covered in sawdust and a mat for the dog. Often when Sansa arrives the dog is there on the porch, head perking up as he senses her approach, but she’s never seen anyone sitting in these rocking-chairs, even when it was Ygritte and Jon living here, which was as close to married life as Jon ever came.

Sansa never got to know Ygritte well, though she’d admired her fearlessness.

"It's funny," Robb had said once, "how you two look alike from a distance, but not from up close."

Robb could spew nonsense sometimes, but this particular comment had rung surprisingly true. Ygritte had red hair, too, of a bright ruddy color like the heart of a fire. But her face was angles where Sansa's was soft curves, and Sansa had never quite been able to tell which one of them was the less refined version of the other. Maybe it was she who lacked Ygritte's wisdom and wit and the dangerous edge to her laughter. Or maybe it was Ygritte who lacked Sansa's poise and clear-headedness and her ability to attain her goals with a smile instead of a threat.

When she thinks about Ygritte now, there’s one particular occurrence that comes to mind, an encounter a month or two after her father’s death. One of Joffrey’s friends had punched her in the mouth – she can’t really remember why. Joffrey used to say, with something like awe, though not quite respect, that she was very good at speaking out of turn; that it was nearly an art, the way she did it. And so he told Meryn Trant to hit her and Meryn did it like he’d have swatted a fly, hand half-fisted, the force of it knocking her head to the side.

After that she’d gone and done what her sister always did when she was upset: she ran for the woods. When she emerged at the northern end of the forest, with leaves in her hair and the smudge of tears down her cheeks, she'd found Ygritte watching her from the porch of the house.

“You better come in,” she’d said. “Put some ice on that bruise before it swells.”

Sansa had edged closer warily, small step by small step as she twisted the hems of her sleeves between her dirty fingers.

“You look like a little doe,” Ygritte had said. It sounded like an insult, somehow. Setting down her mug of coffee, she'd caught Sansa’s chin and turned her face left and right, assessing the damage. The light around them was golden and thick with dust.

“There’s blood all over your shirt. Come on. I’ll get you one of Jon’s.”

Sansa had vaguely wondered why Ygritte wasn’t lending her one of her own, and if this was a way of saying, _See, I respect your strange Stark ways, you don’t owe me anything, and if you have to repay anyone, it’ll be your own kin._

But whatever her reasons had been, Sansa had been grateful, afterwards, for the plaid shirt that smelled like Jon and the dog’s head butting against her knee and the coffee that Ygritte had sweetened without asking.

And for the ice, of course, which Ygritte had wrapped in a towel and held against her face. As she looked down on her, she'd said, “Get yourself a guy who’ll punch back, or start punching back yourself.”

 

 

The porch is empty when Sansa steps out of the woods, without even the dog, wolf-like Ghost with his red eyes and his pale fur. She walks as hesitantly as she had on the day she’d seen Ygritte on the porch. As if her presence might disturb something.

Jon could be at the yard or even at the road stop – she knows he goes there for drinks after work sometimes – but she tried to time this right, to catch him in between, on his way back from the yard, on his way to oblivion by way of rye whiskey.

She sits on the porch, in one of the creaking chairs. After a while she stops watching the road and lies back, lets the chair rock slowly back and forth as she listens to the distant humdrum of the mill with her eyes closed. For a moment at least she tries not to think, whether it's about the will or about what she'll say to Jon.

A few minutes go by. Too long a time to be wasted doing nothing, too short for her to rest properly. She hears Jon's truck coming up the road. When the rumble of the engine dies down she realizes that silence has fallen upon the valley. The day has ended back at the mill and there's only the distant howl of a dog – not Ghost, never Ghost, though she can hear him moving around the front yard, following some trace or other – and the front door of the truck slamming shut, Jon's steady step climbing the stairs.

Still she doesn't open her eyes, wonders if he'll come to sit beside her.

He doesn't. When she turns her head to look at him she finds him looking back, with his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket and a carefully blank expression.

"Hey," she says, her throat tight.

Jon holds her gaze a moment longer. Then he looks down – slight frown, shadowed eyes – and pulls a pack of smokes from his front pocket. He taps the cigarette against the pack before lighting it and Sansa’s eyes follow the movement of his hand, up and down and higher up to his mouth,  
with the faded blue lines of a tattoo shifting between his forefinger and thumb, two arrows rubbing together. Turning back towards the forest, Jon takes a drag of the cigarette, reaching down with his other hand to scratch Ghost behind the ears, much like she would place a distracted hand on Rickon’s head.

“Don’t go meddling,” he says.

“Meddling,” she repeats.

“The Freys and the Boltons... You’d be stirring a hornet’s nest. You don’t want to do that.”

“I ain’t got a choice. I can’t just let them take our house. And the woods... How'd you like that, having the Boltons as neighbors?”

“If the will stands, you’ll have to cut them down,” Jon says. “Cut down the trees, sell every last truckload of timber so the profit is yours, not Roose’s.”

“I grew up in those woods!” she cries, the words wrenched out of her by some bigger force than simple outrage. Deep down, she knows that this won’t come to pass, or that if it does, she won’t be here to see it. She’d sooner die, cut herself down, like she would a tree – like the trees themselves do, sometimes, to let the forest grow.

Jon is staring at her, his dark eyebrows lifted in surprise. She shies away from this searching look, lifting her legs onto the rocking chair and crossing her arms over them.

“I have to find Robb and I’ll find him, even if you don’t help me. But you should be ashamed. He’s your kin. Your friend. If you’d gone missing, you can be damn sure Robb would have gone looking. He wouldn’t have stopped until he’d found you.”

“The difference,” Jon says, flicking his cigarette over the banister, “is that Robb pissed off the Freys, and I’ll never do something that crazy.”

“Look at you. All high and mighty. Jon the Blameless.” Sansa rises abruptly, sending the chair swinging madly behind her. “I’ll deal with the Freys myself.”

As she makes to leave however, Jon’s arm materializes between her and the front steps, his hand slamming into the wooden post at her side.

“Don’t,” he warns. “You leave the Freys and the Boltons alone, girl.” 

Sansa bristles. “What am I supposed to do?”

When she tries to shove him back, he uses the momentum to pull her in, his hand heavy on the back of her neck.

“Sansa.”

Sansa closes her eyes, stubbornly refusing to look at him.

“Listen to me,” he says, rubbing their noses together. The gesture is so affectionate and wolfish that Sansa can’t help but do the same, nose to nose as the color rises in her cheeks. As if of all things, this is what she should be ashamed of, this wolf kiss.

“You stay put,” he says. “You wait.”

Ghost steals in behind her, pushing her further against Jon, and though she could try to step aside, she finds herself latching onto his wrist with both hands, her fingers searching for his pulse. And when she does find it, like the frantic beat of wings against a window, she whispers, “I’d go to bed with you. I’ll do it right now, if you say you’ll help me.”

Then, finally, she dares to meet his eyes.

“Go,” Jon says, lifting his hand from her neck. There’s enough contained violence in his tone that she doesn’t insist. Turning her back on him, she stumbles down the stairs and runs across the yard. She only stops once she’s well out of sight, lost somewhere in these woods that look like him and smell like him, of wood and frost, and of fires that have just been put out, the smoke still curling among the trees.

It’s no use dwelling on it, the unfairness of it. She could have voiced the obvious, _But you want me, I know you want me._ She’s known for a while now. Ever since he’d let her rub herself against his leg, right there in his kitchen with the counter digging into her back and his obstinate silence throughout. And with every one of her soft little gasps his hand would tighten in her hair –

And then he’d pushed her through the door and into the soft grey dusk.

_It won’t be me that ruins you. Go home._

She looks around her and with a sudden scream of rage she walks over to the nearest tree and kicks it as hard as she can.

“What home!” she shouts. “ _What home?_ ”

Jon’s forest remains silent around her, and as often with Jon himself it’s at once a blessing and a curse. Presence disguised as absence, a kiss that stops just short of her lips even as the eyes say, _But I wanted to._

 

 

Bran comes in while she's preparing dinner, angling his chair away from a toy train that Rickon has left in the middle of the living room carpet.

"RICKON!" Sansa shouts as she keeps stirring the pot on the stove, canned beans and rice. "CLEAN FLOORS."

They hear Shaggydog first, barking somewhere in the vicinity of Rickon's room. Then Rickon and Shaggydog barge into the room in an excited pitter-patter of boy feet and dog paws.

"Mel came by," Bran says. He rolls the chair up to her side and looks up at her, his eyes dark and thoughtful. _God, but he looks like Jon_ , Sansa thinks, flinching. "She left a fish that Davos caught today."

"I saw it too late. We'll have it for dinner tomorrow, okay? Can he take you both to class tomorrow?"

"Yeah." Bran rolls the chair back a foot or two, then forward again. "She said the Boltons want the house. She said it's because their wood isn't as good as ours, and the Freys are helping them."

Sansa sets the spoon down carefully and forces herself to take a breath before answering. _That meddling woman._

"We'll be fine," she says. "They can't just take our house." 

"She said Robb’s dead and they have his will."

For a moment, Sansa wishes she were back in the forest, with the black trees all around her and the sleek glimmer of water coursing over the yellow-brown stones. Leaning down, she lays a hand on Bran's neck and looks him in the eye as she says, "I'll fix it. This is our home. I won't let them take it from us."

She doesn't say "Robb's not dead", because that's probably a lie.

"I won't let them either," Bran says, fourteen and broken-legged, but with a resolve and a seriousness that she doesn't question.

"I trust you." She plants a brisk kiss on his forehead before she straightens up and calls, "Rickon, dinner!"

 

 

The next day, when Davos comes by in Mel’s car to pick up Bran and Rickon, Sansa asks him to drive her to the _Mountain Lion_.

"I could take a look at your father's old car, try to fix it for you," Davos offers.

Sansa is busy trying to pull her skirt down so it will at least cover her upper thighs. It seems she's grown since she last worked at the bar, which she wouldn't have thought possible.

"Thanks," she says. "That would be nice. I'm not sure there's much to be done, though. The only reason we didn't sell it was that it's too broken down to interest anyone."

“You can’t get around without a car.” Davos glances at her and then returns his gaze to the road ahead. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“We need a truck,” Rickon pipes up from the back. “For the dogs!”

“You’re not taking your dog to school,” Sansa says. “We don’t need a truck.”

“If you need to take Shaggydog somewhere, I’ll be happy to drive you,” Davos tells Rickon.

“Be careful, he might think you’re being serious,” Sansa whispers, partly to hide her surge of gratitude.

“I don’t mind.”

_And then I’ll be in your debt_ , she thinks. _That’s the last thing I want, even if you’re doing it out of kindness – or out of pity._

 

 

Davos drops her in front of the _Mountain Lion_. Sansa bypasses the few trucks that are parked outside the bar, hoping that the truckers inside won’t be among those that she’d rather avoid – like Meryn Trant with his vicious upswing, or that brute Gregor Clegane, who’s wanted in another state for murder or rape or both; the rumors don’t agree. Maybe Gregor’s brother will be here, the enormous Sandor with his heavily scarred face, who used to slip her sizable tips and who’d wait around when she closed the bar, to make sure she got safely to Robb’s car.

When she comes in, the _Mountain Lion_ is mostly empty, save for two biker types that she doesn’t know. Nothing has changed since the spring: it’s the same old tables that Shae never cleans properly, the same display of dusty bottles under a bright green neon, and the same jukebox from some bygone era, in front of which she’d once seen Jon dance with Dany Targaryen.

Sansa stares at the empty dance floor a little too long, because that was just before she left and she remembers it well, Dany with the long waves of her white-blond hair, swaying to the rhythm of an old love song. She looked almost childlike, with her dreamy eyes and her cropped jeans and that too-large shirt that quite obviously belonged to someone else. But Sansa didn’t buy it, maybe because of the way Dany kept dancing in and out of Jon’s grasp, like she’d flitted in and out of so many situations over the years. _What’s she doing here?_ Shae had said, appearing at Sansa’s side. _Isn’t this supposed to be her wedding night?_ And Sansa to reply, _Targaryens_ , disdainfully, because back then she could still afford to be judgmental.

She wonders what Dany’s up to these days, if she’s still on the road or if she’s returned to the lovelorn Jorah, who’s probably waited for her in the meantime, much as he must have waited on their wedding night, as she laughed and threw her arms around Jon’s neck.

“Sansa!”

Cersei’s smile hasn’t changed, either. She looks as if someone is forcing the corners of her mouth upwards. Sansa used to hope that Cersei’s interest in her would wane over time, especially after her son had cast her aside in favor of Margaery. But Cersei had been far too amused by then, torn between a desire to shape Sansa into a younger version of her jaded self, and an even stronger impulse to break her into pieces.

“I was in the kitchen,” Cersei says, which Sansa takes to mean that Cersei was out back and smoking, and maybe having a swig of that flask that she keeps hidden in her coat sleeves. “How have you been, little bird?”

“I was wondering if you’d take me on. I’m ready to do the same hours as before.” 

“The city didn’t agree with you, then.”

Cersei takes down a bottle from above the bar and pours an inch of whiskey into two foggy glasses. Sansa knows better than to refuse – not when she desperately needs Cersei to take her back, despite the abrupt way in which she'd taken off the previous time.

“I had to look after my brothers.”

“You should get married,” Cersei declares, knocking back her drink. “My brother’s still available. Or I could arrange things between you and Lancel.”

Sansa flinches. “Thanks,” she says, her smile just as stilted as Cersei’s. “I’m not looking to get married... right now.” _Or ever._

She knows which one of her brothers Cersei has in mind. The younger one. The dwarf. Aside from the fact that Sansa finds him vaguely frightening – a remnant of her school years, when they’d tell stories about him, and the more disturbing the better – she knows that he’s living with Shae. Cersei might not be ready to accept it, her brother and a former hooker, but it’s lasted a while now, and Sansa doubts that Shae intends to go anywhere.

As for Lancel... Cersei’s nephew is easy on the eyes, it’s true, with his wheat-colored hair and his hairless cheeks and his small, pink mouth. But he’s also a bigot and a bore. He used to arrive before Sansa when she did the morning shift, because he had to light up the grill, and sometimes she’d catch him kissing the cross above his dashboard before he left his car.

“Think about it,” Cersei insists, placing a long-fingered, bejeweled hand above Sansa’s. “Because it’s either that, or Ramsay Bolton.”

“I’m not marrying Ramsay Bolton, either,” Sansa frowns.

“I've heard that the offer was on the table. Since they’re going to inherit your house, anyways... If I were you, I’d throw in my lot with a Lannister. Oh, my brother isn’t much to look at. And Lancel can be a little... Strict. But you’ll never want for anything and they won’t treat you like dirt.”

“I didn’t come here to find a husband. I came for work. Do you have any?”

Cersei sighs. “Don’t say I didn’t try to help. But I could use another pair of hands. That girl is the embodiment of sloth. You can start today. Old Pycelle will be here soon for his omelet, and these two back there could probably use a refill.”

 

 

By the time Shae walks in, Sansa has served four breakfasts and twice as many coffees. The girls hug and when Shae launches into an elaborate lie about the bad weather, Sansa doesn’t comment upon her day-old make-up and her high heels. Shae promptly leans against a table to swap the heels for a pair of sneakers.

“I’m glad you’re back. Cersei’s been working me to death.” 

“Sounds like her.”

As far as Sansa is concerned, Cersei and Shae complement each other, with the one willing to exploit her workers, and the other intent on doing as little work as possible while giving the appearance of strain.

“Give me these plates, so that it’ll look like I’m doing something,” Shae says. “I’ll be right back.”

She disappears inside the kitchen. Sansa has barely had time to wipe the table that Shae returns and grabs her arm.

“Okay, we’re taking a break.”

They go out onto the parking lot, because the small fenced-in courtyard behind the _Mountain Lion_ is Cersei’s spot. At present there’s only one truck parked outside, and Sansa can see lights up on the mountain, on the other side of the valley. It might be getting close to midday, but the landscape hasn’t caught on yet. It could be dusk or dawn, or any other colorless hour that requires lights be turned on. For a brief moment, Sansa gets a sense of something bigger, as if the parking lot wasn’t boxed in between the mountains, but opening onto them instead, suggesting a way out.

“I didn’t expect you to come back, Birdie,” Shae says. “When I heard your ma had taken off I thought you’d let someone else look after the boys. What happened with your aunt?”

Sansa accepts a cigarette, mostly to ward off the cold. Shae looks warm enough, wrapped up in a powder-blue jacket that must have cost a fortune. Sansa pulls her own jacket tighter around herself and takes a quick drag of the cigarette.

“We fell out,” she says.

“What, she felt threatened or something?”

“Or something. How’s Tyrion?”

“The same as ever. He still likes his drinks and his jokes. He’s in charge of accounts at the factory now. He took me to the ocean last month.”

“The ocean,” Sansa repeats.

Perhaps if she accepted Cersei’s offer and married Tyrion, she’d be the one with the warm coat and the holidays at the beach. Though it’s just as likely that she’d get the short end of the stick: the house in the shadow of the factory and the embittered husband, who’ll give her a week off a year while he takes his mistress to the beach.

But she’d still get the coat, and the idea alone is nearly enough to make her reconsider. She can almost see Shae’s ocean washing over the end of the grey strip of road, taunting her with what she’ll never have.

_Petyr would have taken me to the beach._

She regrets the thought as soon as it occurs to her. There’s no doubt her aunt’s husband would have taken her places. Any place she’d wanted, provided that she didn’t lock her door at night.

At her side, Shae is trying to twist her dark ringlets of hair into some sort of bun, the cigarette tucked at the corner of her mouth.

“I’m going to go see Roose Bolton,” Sansa announces, half to herself.

“Don’t.” Shae has a way of sounding far more authoritative than her frail appearance lets on. “You’re a brave girl, but I don’t think there’s anything to be done. It’s one of you against all of them, and you have more to lose than just that house.”

“It ain’t about being brave,” Sansa says, because it’s the only part of Shae’s speech that she can reasonably argue with. “I’m doing what I have to.”

“What you have to do, is think of you. You’re young and pretty. You’ve got brains.” Shae glances back towards the bar. “Don’t turn into her,” she says.

Sansa doesn’t need to ask her what she means. On one of the walls beside the bar, there’s a picture of a younger Cersei, posing outside the town hall with her twin brother Jaime. She looks like the sort of woman a man might take a bullet for, with her tall slender body and her golden hair spilling over her shoulders. The picture must have been taken fifteen, maybe twenty years ago. Now Cersei’s expressive mouth is generally frozen into a grimace of disdain, and Sansa has seen her hands tremble, no matter how much she likes to say that contrary to her deceased husband, she won’t let alcohol take her to an early grave.

“I know better than to marry a man I hate and take up drinking as a distraction,” Sansa says. 

“This break has lasted long enough, don’t you think?”

Sansa freezes, the cigarette halfway to her mouth. Shae ducks behind Cersei without a word, rushing back inside. Cersei holds Sansa’s gaze, her fingers tapping softly against the doorframe.

“You’re wrong, you know. Thinking you can escape... That you’re different from the generations that came before you. Even your mother, you know that? She hadn’t planned on marrying your father. Look where it got her. If you’re lucky your husband will cheat on you. If not... You’ll suffer. Every day until you die. In the meantime, you’ll be thankful for the alcohol.”

She pulls open the door and holds it for Sansa.

“I’m looking forward to you marrying the Bolton son,” she says.


	3. Mountainside

Sansa thinks of asking Margaery to come with her to the Boltons’, but she knows it would be selfish, and it probably wouldn’t make her task any easier, aside from giving her a hand to hold on the way there and back. So in the end she goes alone, covering the distance on foot. It’s a good five miles up the side of a mountain, with the daylight fading and the wind pulling at her clothes. She’s put on the warmest garment she could find, Robb’s fur-lined jacket, and Bran’s gloves, because they’re made of real leather. She considered taking one of the dogs with her, though eventually she decided against it. Shaggydog and Summer are docile enough with the boys, but she can’t be sure that they’d obey her, and she knows what happens in these mountains when a dog misbehaves.

When she was a child, she used to have her own dog. Lady, she was called, and she was more docile and friendly than any dog this side of the valley. Until they’d recovered her bloody body close to the edge of the woods, with a bullet between the eyes. Her father dug the grave, but Sansa buried the dog herself. She cried as she lowered the body into the ground and she cried some more as she threw in the first handful of dirt. But as her father began to shovel dirt back into the hole, she’d found it in herself to sing, in a quavering voice at first and then louder and louder until her voice rang bright and clear across the woods.

_There’s a better world awaiting, in the sky, oh, in the sky._

She’s singing now, too, though only in a whisper to accompany the rhythm of her steps.

_“Single I am, and will remain... A lazy man I won’t maintain.”_

She sees the smoke long before she sees the houses. It rises in thin plumes above the sparse forest south of the Bolton lands.

Roose Bolton’s house overlooks the valley and the nearby houses of his kin. The lowest part of the land, the one you reach first when you follow the road, is a trailer park like so many others in the valley. Sansa stops there first, just in case. Maybe she’ll get lucky, and she won’t have to climb any further.

She finds a girl sitting on an upturned crate in front of one of the trailers, smoking a joint with her legs extended in front of her. She could be a Bolton – she has the dark hair, and that vacant look that it's never wise to wonder about. Most of the Boltons are either cold fish or sharks.

"Hi," Sansa calls out, walking up to the trailer. "Is Theon around?" 

"Who?"

The girl's face is a mask, with her pale mouth set in a line and her clear eyes like mirrors. Sansa sees the trees in them, just like she sees the trailer park in the girl's grey-brown clothes, or in that lax way she has of holding the acrid-smelling joint.

"Theon Greyjoy," Sansa tries again. "I know he hangs around here sometimes. Cooking crank with Ramsay and the Karstarks."

This last assertion is a wild guess. She's only heard rumors. Everyone knows that the Boltons have meth labs scattered on the mountainside, and one of Theon's old girlfriends told Sansa that he'd taken up with Bolton's son, which sounds believable. Back when Robb was still around he'd keep his friend in check, but with Robb gone (and maybe because he couldn't cope with Robb leaving), Theon could well have gone from the occasional fix to cooking his own crank. The Greyjoys had been running drugs through the region long before he was born. It’s surprising in fact that he didn’t get involved any sooner.

But the girl cocks her head and scrunches up her brow and says, "There's no Theon Greyjoy around here."

"Okay.”

The girl might be telling the truth or she might be lying, but there's no way for Sansa to tell, not unless she starts banging on every trailer door, rousing far more Boltons than she cares to.

"You're the Stark girl," the girl says suddenly. Something flashes in her eyes. Recognition, maybe. For a second she seems like a different person. "I've heard of you."

"I'm Sansa Stark."

Sansa hesitates, then takes a step forward and holds out her hand. The girl jumps to her feet and comes to shake it.

"Myranda. You came here to see a friend, then?" 

"Yes... No. I came to see Roose. If he's here."

"He should be." Myranda looks above her shoulder at the grey house overlooking the park. "He might not want to talk to you, though."

"That's fine. In that case I'll just leave." 

"I'll walk you."

They start walking up the hill, Myranda idly kicking stones as she goes. Sansa keeps a wary eye on the trailers, wondering how many people are currently watching, lifting a polyester drape and letting it drop once they’ve gone by.

“You must be relieved,” Myranda says. 

“Relieved?”

“To be getting married. It solves everything, right?” 

Sansa shoots her a surprised glance.

“I’m not getting married.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

Sansa could ask for details. _Who told you that? Do they know what happened to my brother?_ But something in Myranda’s tone has robbed her of her grit. The girl almost sounds mocking, as if she's daring Sansa to ask for more, and looking forward to the discomfort that her answers might cause. So they walk the rest of the way in silence, with Myranda smiling to herself and Sansa fisting her hands in her pockets and biting her tongue to keep herself from asking questions she doesn’t want an answer to.

Myranda leaves her at the door of Roose Bolton’s house. Sansa watches her go, sauntering down the hill as if the walk and their conversation have reinvigorated her. She no longer has much in common with the prostrated figure from the trailer park.

When she looks back towards the house, she sees a pair of eyes peering at her from behind a window. The temptation to scamper off is strong. It's something Robb had drilled into her at a very young age. _Sometimes, if you feel like you got a better chance if you run, you don't question it, you just run. That short second you take to make up your mind? It could make all the difference._

Now that she's come this far, however, running doesn't seem like much of an option. And besides, Robb's never been the best at giving advice, or at following his own code of conduct.

The door swings open on a big woman, her arms crossed protectively over her voluminous chest. She looks at Sansa without looking at her, her grey-blue eyes darting from her face to her shoulder to the mountains behind her. She keeps chewing on her bottom lip.

"Mrs Bolton," Sansa says.

She'd attended the woman's wedding, a year or so before now. Walda Bolton had been Walda Frey at the time, and she'd looked radiant. Sansa remembers her singing above all; she'd fallen asleep on Robb's shoulder, listening to these folk tunes that stretched so far beyond her, speaking of depths of feeling she might never experience.

"You're a long way from home," Walda says.

It looks as if she's been drained of all color, Sansa reflects, thinking of the bride with her ruddy cheeks and her dimpled smile. Walda seems to have aged ten years in as many months. Her brown hair is streaked with grey.

"I have to talk to Roose.”

“You can’t.”

“Because he ain’t here or because he won’t see me?”

Walda hovers on the spot, casting a few glances behind her.

“I’ll make you coffee,” she says at last. “For the road.”

"Can't you tell him I'm here, at least?" Sansa tries again.

"Oh, he knows," Walda replies. “It won’t do no good.”

"Insist, then!" Sansa exclaims, exasperated by the woman's meekness. Remembering her manners, she tacks on a half-hearted, "please."

Walda retreats within the house without saying anything else, closing the door behind her. Sansa stomps her feet on the frozen ground, gloved hands balled up in the pockets of Robb's jacket. It's the thought of the walk home that helps her stay in place. It was a two-hour walk to come here and it'll be a one-hour walk back at least. Besides having left early from work, she'll have to take the morning shift the next day at six, relieving the student Cersei’s hired for the night shift. She'd rather her long trek doesn't turn out to have been completely fruitless. 

"Sansa Stark."

She’d been facing away from the wind, obstinately watching the front door, so she hasn't heard or seen him approach. He stands right behind her, a boy of about her age, nineteen or so, square-shouldered in his soft brown sweater, with chestnut-brown hair and large blue eyes.

"I'm Ramsay Bolton," he says. "Hello." He doesn't try to shake her hand. "Isn't it funny that we're never met before?"

"You weren't at the wedding," Sansa says, in part to break the growing silence. "Your father's wedding."

"No, I wasn't."

She doesn't like the way he stares at her, the curiosity plain on his face - unless it's something else, a kind of hungry delight.

The door to the house opens again and Walda comes out, holding a steaming mug. She nearly drops it when she sees Ramsay, the liquid sloshing over the rim, some of it splattering at her feet. She's wearing a pair of shapeless grey slippers. For a second the large slippers are all that Sansa can see, as if they were some sort of sign. _This is what marriage looks like. This is what awaits you._

"Here's your coffee," Walda says, holding out the cup.

"Did you ask him?" Sansa asks.

"Ask what, to who?" Ramsay enquires pleasantly.

"He says you're to go home," Walda says. "It's getting late, child." 

_You're not old enough to be calling me child_ , Sansa thinks.

"I'll drive you," Ramsay says. Car keys materialize in his hand.

Sansa slants a look at him. His smile is all wrong. It lights up his eyes, but like a projector might suddenly drown you in electric light.

"Thanks, but I'll manage," she says. She takes the cup from Walda's hands, drinks a sip or two. The coffee is too bitter and it burns her tongue. She hands it back. "Thanks for the coffee."

As she turns away and begins to walk downhill, Ramsay falls into step beside her, hands in the pockets of his jeans. He starts to whistle, glaringly loud.

"I've been told you could sing," he says, after a few seconds, and he starts whistling again, a different tune this time. When she doesn’t say anything and keeps looking steadily ahead, he stops and whistles the last bit again, more insistently.

_“I dug on your grave the best part of the night,”_ she sings, her voice rising in the night air.

They’ve just about reached the trailer park. Close-by she can hear the sounds of cutlery, and from far-off it’s a child screaming, a screen-door banging shut. The smell of meat drifts along on the breeze.

“You do have a nice voice,” Ramsay says, with some surprise. “But that’s the wrong line. You’ve got to sing the girl’s part... _My mind is to marry_ , and all that.”

“I’m not marrying anybody.”

“Not you, silly girl. It’s in the song.”

Sansa stops walking. A few feet away, the trailer park gives way to a small thicket of trees, and then it’s just the gravel road plummeting off the face of the mountain, down into the night. 

“Thanks for walking me back,” she says. “You have a nice evening.”

When she resumes walking, she makes use of her long legs to put as much distance between them as she can. For a few seconds, she thinks it’ll work. It’s cold out here and he doesn’t have a coat, and the trailers and houses must be beckoning to him. Of course there’s still the possibility that he’ll fetch his car...

... Or run after her, as he does now, the sound of his approaching steps making her want to scream.

“Hey, hey, hey. Wait.” The pleasant, fanciful tone is gone. She suspects that it’s just another way of taunting her, with seriousness instead of good humor. “I can’t just let you go back alone, through the woods, at this time of night. You might run into some kind of trouble.”

“I can take care of myself.”

He’s whistling again, not as loud as before, just little fragments of songs breaking over each other as he walks. Sansa keeps walking fast, sticking to the road. _Don’t you think they’ve warned me about men like you? Dead eyes and a smile like a gaping wound._

She’s fended off a few boys in her time, strangers mostly, because in the valley most of the men know better, even the bad ones. There’d been a group that waited for her once behind the _Mountain Lion_ , but Sandor Clegane had been at the bar that night, and she’d screamed and he came running. She wouldn’t have wanted to be in the men’s place, because even though there were three of them, the tallest one barely came up to Sandor’s shoulder, and he’d tossed them around like rag dolls.

She knows better than to rely on men for protection, though, and there’s a knife in her pocket, bumping against her fingers with every quick step that she takes. If Ramsay comes too close she’ll use it, for all the good that it’ll do her. This is his land, and the only people in a radius of miles are his people.

_I should have taken the dog_ , she thinks, and then discards the thought. All that matters now is to stay focused. Her priority is to get home alive – the rest should be accessory. The boys will be waiting for her.

The road ahead is still despairingly dark, framed on either side by those slender trees that grow crooked and won’t burn properly, the very reason why the Boltons have set their sights on her forest. The next house is one mile off at least, and there’s no telling anyone will be home – it’s the Hornwoods’ old home, and they rarely ever use it except in the heart of winter, when there’s too much snow and their new house is cut off from the main road. Lower in the valley she can hear the road, cars going by, and dogs howling, from one side of the valley to the next – a whole living world that she can’t see, families settling down for dinner with the dog sitting on the front porch and the rifle slung over the coat rack.

If he kicks her, she’ll trip him. If he goes for her arms, she’ll knee him in the groin. If she’s lucky, she might make it a hundred feet. She’s a fast runner.

It’s likely that he’s faster.

“Decency’s a weird thing, isn’t it?” Ramsay says. The sound of his voice startles her so badly he might as well have fired a shot in the empty air. Her whole body goes tense, her fingers tightening around the knife. “I let you go home alone, I’m being rude. I walk you back, well. What will people say? The two of us alone at night in the woods? This ain’t good for your reputation.”

“There ain't nothing rude about it. I know the way. I don’t need the company.” 

“I’m sure you can make it up to me.”

She refuses to look at him and though she’d like nothing more than to hasten her step further, she makes herself keep an even pace. It might be that he’s only waiting for her to snap and start running.

That’s the scariest thing of all, that she can’t read him, that she can’t tell what his plan is, and when and where he’ll pounce.

“I don’t owe you anything,” she says. “I didn’t ask you to come along.”

“Didn’t you think of taking a flashlight? These roads aren’t lit at night.”

Sansa swallows past the knot in her throat and doesn’t answer and goes on walking. When she realizes that she’s speeding up in spite of herself, spurred on by fear, she forces herself to slow down. Every time she changes her pace, he matches his step to hers. There’s something disturbing about it – something reminiscent of a beast shadowing its prey – so that she finds herself edging closer and closer to the edge of the road, in some desperate attempt to stay out of reach.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I know the road well. I can tell you for instance that there’s this little hut about half a mile from here. Just a hunting shack, barely enough space for two people to lie down in, but it’s better than the open, ain’t it?”

A flash of light – a car rounding the bend. Sansa’s foot slips off the side of the road and she stumbles, putting out a hand to break her fall. Ramsay moves as if he’d been waiting for that moment from the start, a calculated spring, with his smile the only thing she can see. And then the car stops.

Sansa can barely hear a thing above the pounding of her heart. Ramsay smells like every drunken male who tried to approach her at the truck stop, unless it’s her fear that makes him smell that way, of beer and sweat and motor oil. He steps back.

She risks a look over her shoulder, ready to bolt.

It’s not a car but a truck, stopped in the middle of the road, with Ramsay caught in the headlights like an oddly menacing deer. She can’t see past the dark windshield but she’d know that truck anywhere. Relief makes her shudder, as if her body was only now remembering the cold.

Ramsay takes a step backwards, then another, that elated smile firmly in place though she can tell there’s nothing light-hearted about this retreat. Every step he takes is measured, and he seems poised on the edge of a full-fledged flight. She scrambles quickly up the ditch and runs over to the truck. It takes her two attempts to open the door, her gloved fingers slipping on the handle, but then at last she’s on one side of the windshield and Ramsay is on the other, giving her a mock salute as he finally turns away and begins to walk home.

She ventures a glance to her side. Jon’s face is so tense she thinks his jaw might break. He has one hand on the wheel and the other clenched around the barrel of a shotgun, the window cranked down low enough that she can tell Ramsay must have been a precious few seconds away from having his smile blown off.

“Jon, let’s go.” She knows better than to tell him she’s alright. “Please, let’s just go.”

And with that it’s over. Jon shoves the gun under the seat and reverses onto the side of the road, and before long the Bolton woods and the frozen ditch and the dark stretch of road are far behind them. Sansa sags against the door, turning her face into her shoulder so Jon won’t see her crying, her hands tucked under her knees so he won’t see her shaking.

 

 

 

As they reach the familiar woods and the tar under the tires gives way to dirt and potholes, she twists a little in her seat, whispers “thank you”.

 

 

 

Jon pulls over in front of the house. Immediately Shaggydog and Summer rise from the porch, and both dogs run up to the truck, one on each side, pawing excitedly at the doors. Sansa knows she won’t be able to stomach whatever reproach Jon has coming for her, so she jumps out quickly, catching the dog around the collar to prevent him from bowling her over. She’s about to slam the door shut behind her when she sees the house, with its lit-up windows. She can already hear their questions – Bran’s, unnervingly on point, _Is it about Robb’s will, Did someone hurt you?_ , and Rickon’s, shrewder than they may seem, _Can I go out play with Shaggydog, Can we make the cobbler?_ , because he’ll have sensed her distraction and will try to profit from it.

“Can you come in?” she asks, without looking at Jon, her grip tight on Shaggydog’s neck. “Please.”

She closes the door without waiting for an answer. She’s halfway up the steps when she hears his door slam shut in turn.

Before going in, she makes sure to wipe her eyes and cheeks. It won’t do to worry the boys, and the sooner she can fend off their questions, the sooner she’ll be able to crawl into bed.

When she steps into the kitchen however, her brothers are nowhere in sight. The remnants of their dinner sit in the sink, Bran’s work no doubt: rice and potatoes and tomato sauce, with a can of chocolate cream sitting open on the counter. Bran’s left her a plate and there’s a spoon sticking out of the can, with a torn piece of paper propped up against it that says, “EAT.”

“I came by earlier,” Jon says. “They said you’d been in and out again and they didn’t know where. Bran said he’d fix dinner.”

Sansa nods, and reaching for his hand she pulls him deeper into the house, hitting the light switch as she goes. She can tell he’s still angry at her, but he humors her anyways, following as she drags him past Rickon’s empty room that smells like a kennel, past a bathroom that smells like boys and laundry detergent, and past the closed door to her parents’ room, which she knows would smell musty despite how often she goes in there, trying to make it look lived in.

She closes the door to her room, finally letting go of Jon’s hand. As she tries to think of what she’ll say, she hears him moving about behind her, stepping left towards Arya’s messy side, which she hasn’t dared touch since her sister left, and then right towards her own, with the unmade bed and the heart-shaped alarm clock and the pictures with their border of spangled scotch tape. She sneaks a look in his direction and finds him peering at a picture of her and Robb – Robb posing proudly beside a tree he’s just cut down, while she stands atop the trunk with her leg extended like some redneck ballerina.

“Can I talk now?” Jon asks, straightening up.

She sighs, her eyes on his dirty shoes. “Tomorrow?”

And it might be cheating to exaggerate the trembling of her voice as she does, when really, she’s recovered by now, enough at least that she’s aware that nothing will reach her here. But she can’t bring herself to regret it, not when it causes him to swallow back whatever it was that he’d been about to say. He stays still as she unzips his jacket, lets her remove his belt and finally catches on in time to push her hands away from his shoelaces. He kicks off the boots and shrugs off the jacket. When she curls up on the bed, he gets in behind her, and reaches over her shoulder to turn off the lamp.

“Don’t you fucking do that again,” he mutters against her hair.

She could lie, but it seems wiser not to, so she just pulls his arm tighter around her and shuts her eyes.


	4. Bar Talk

Her alarm goes off at four. It’s nearly a two-hour walk to the _Mountain Lion_ from the house, and in the past she’s often had to cover the final mile at a run to be on time, after a night spent talking to Margaery on the phone (back when they had a landline), or making out with a boy, back when she had time to waste with such things as boys and their sloppy kisses and their warm, clumsy hands on her breasts.

She rubs her eyes and is about to pull herself up when she feels fingers tapping against her hip, and suddenly she remembers that she’s not alone, that the warmth at her back is not the usual nest of rumpled covers but a full-grown man.

“I’ll drive you,” Jon mutters, lips barely moving against her neck. “Sleep.”

She doesn’t need to be told twice. With an upward swing, she knocks the alarm clock off the table, and shuffling back against his chest, she goes back to sleep.

He shakes her awake an hour and a half later. “I made coffee,” he says. He’s already wearing his coat and shoes. 

Sansa follows him to the kitchen. Rickon is up and sitting at the table – whenever something’s out of the ordinary, he has a tendency to smell it ahead of everyone else, dogs included. Either Jon or Rickon has poured cereal into bowls and taken out the milk, and for a time she can only stare at this strange picture of a normal household, with Rickon chewing on his cereal and Jon sipping his coffee and her standing on the doorstep in yesterday’s jeans and her bare feet, trying not to cry.

“Are you driving me to school?” Rickon asks Jon around a mouthful, as he lowers his glass for Shaggydog to dip his tongue in.

“Davos will drive you,” Sansa says, finally stepping over the threshold. “Jon has to go to work. Why are you up, kiddo? It’s five in the morning.”

“We didn’t see you last night,” Rickon says, as if that explains it all. He tilts his head back so she can kiss his forehead, her hand upon his tangle of hair.

“I love you,” she whispers, with a thought for the ditch and the dark road, and how she’ll have to go back there soon enough, regardless of how comfortable this feels.

“We should go,” Jon reminds her, because he’s never been the kind to linger in a happy setting, either.

 

 

“I’ll see you tonight,” Sansa tells Rickon as she walks through the door a few minutes later, juggling her bag and shoes. “Remember to brush your teeth.”

It’s still dark when she climbs into the truck, and maybe that’s what causes her to say, a little foolishly, “Your hair’s worse than mine,” as she reaches over and ruffles his wayward curls.

Jon’s teeth snap close to her wrist and she turns away to hide her smile.

Her gaze falls upon Melisandre, standing on her doorstep in her dressing gown as if it wasn’t 5am and pitch black beyond the yellow halo of her porch light. Sansa chokes on the laughter that had been bubbling up inside her throat, and she’s relieved when Jon pulls away from the drive and Melisandre recedes in the distance, with her fixed stare and her thoughtful smile.

As they drive along the forest, Jon stops the truck, and before she can ask him what he’s doing, he’s gone and jumped down into the ditch by the road. As she watches, he heads off into the woods, stopping once he’s passed the first few lines of trees.

She thinks she can hear him whistle, unless it’s a bird calling, or maybe just the wind. They stay like this for what seems like a long time, Jon waiting with his hands in the pockets of his jacket and Sansa watching him through the open door. Eyes on his strong back, on his long legs, like Jon’s a tree among the trees. The only thing that moves is his hair, black strands swaying gently in the breeze. Sansa glances at the dusty clock on the dashboard, then back at the woods. She should suggest they move on. What she wants to do, really, is to slip out of the truck and tiptoe behind him with her boots leaving the lightest imprint on the frost-covered ground, until it’s too late and her arms are around his waist and there’s nothing he can do about it.

A white shadow bursts out from among the trees, dashing up to Jon in a flurry of dust and frosty leaves. Jon motions for the dog to follow him and the both of them walk back towards the truck, Ghost climbing in ahead of Jon, settling down between the front seats with his tongue hanging out and his great body heaving from the run.

Jon slams the door shut behind him and starts the engine.

“You’ll take him with you,” he says.

“What?”

“He’s well-behaved. He’ll wait for you outside the bar, and he can tag along if you decide to do something stupid.” He swerves back onto the road. “ _When_ you decide to do something stupid.”

Sansa looks at his profile, stubborn eyebrows, stubborn mouth. She leans down and kisses Ghost’s head, because she’s got a feeling he’ll take it better than Jon would if she were to try and kiss his cheek.

“Thanks.”

The only answer she gets is a groan, Jon’s fingers tapping against the wheel. She’s not quite sure what it means yet, but a day ago she would have settled on _Whatever_ , and now she chooses to think it might be _You’re welcome._

 

 

Work is rather slow this early in the morning, though they do get the occasional client. The road beside the bar is a busy thoroughfare for trucks carrying goods across state lines, the same guys passing through every day or week or month. Some of them remember her from the past spring, like Brienne of the Sapphire Isle Company. Contrary to what their label might indicate, the company doesn’t sell sapphires but bath salts, for which there’s apparently a big market north of the mountains. Sansa’s never used bath salts in her life, so the concept eludes her, but Cersei assures them that “you’ve never had a real bath if it didn’t have bath salts and candles,” before she disappears back into the kitchen, with a magazine in one hand and a Bloody Mary in the other.

“I think it’s more about the smell than the salts themselves, right?” Pod says. Brienne’s introduced him as her co-pilot. Apparently his main job is to fiddle with the GPS on a journey that Brienne could probably undertake with her eyes closed.

“You’re thinking of bath bombs,” Sansa says, because Margaery has some in her bathroom and once when Joffrey was away, Margaery had run her a bath, liberally dumping whatever was at hand inside it with the excuse that “you might not get another chance anytime soon”. She’d been right, as it turns out.

“No, bath salts smell too,” Pod insists. “And they’re good for your skin.” When both women give him a look, he shrugs. “It’s written on the boxes. The boxes in our truck, that I keep having to load and unload?”

“I’d need a bath tub to have an opinion,” Brienne says.

“I think some of that stuff you can also use in the shower,” Pod says pensively.

They make a strange pair, the two of them. Brienne’s at least six foot tall, with close-cropped blond hair. Even when she wears long-sleeved shirts one gets a glimpse of her powerful arms under the fabric. On the other side, Pod doesn’t seem like he’s quite done growing yet. He has the face of a guy who’s always sorry for having offended you, even when he hasn’t. Apparently he’s been trying to grow a beard, though at present it mostly exists in the state of a sparse stubble along his jaw.

Brienne waits until Sansa returns to refill their drinks to say, in a conspiratorial tone that’s wholly unnecessary given the lack of customers, "Any news from your ma?"

The coffee sloshes around in the pot as Sansa goes abruptly still.

"No," she says after a second, and resumes filling Brienne's mug. "Did you hear from her? I didn't know you two knew each other."

"We met when I was working for the Baratheons," Brienne says. "That was a while ago. But I consider her a friend. I could ask around for you, if you like."

Sansa is about to say no, not so much because she distrusts Brienne but because she does trust her, and like her, and it doesn't feel right to implicate her in matters that have nothing to do with her. But then she remembers Margaery, her soft insistence. _Girl, sometimes you’ve got to accept help when it’s given willingly._

"You drive past the gold mines, don't you?" 

"Yes?"

"We drive past gold mines?" Pod exclaims, before he dives back into his bacon and eggs with a whispered, "Sorry."

"They call them the Fools' Mines," Brienne tells him. "They never found any gold there, or just enough to start digging and ruin all the people involved. All of them’s old families that used to live well some generations ago. They've still got the pride to show for it, but no money. What business have you got down there?" she asks Sansa.

"My brother was supposed to marry a girl from that country. Jeyne Westerling. Could you ask after her if you can? People say she's run off with Robb, but... I know there's also those who say she went back home. If you see her, tell her I'd like to speak to her."

"Okay," Brienne says. She looks at Sansa a moment longer, her large hands flexing on the table as if she meant to reach out, maybe pat her shoulder.   
"You shouldn't have to do this," she says.

"Don't worry about me. I can look after myself."

"That's not what I meant. You're little more than a child, and these grown men are falling on you like you're the deer in the hunt. Like it's fair game."

"I'm more of a squirrel at this point," Sansa says. "But I guess it has its perks, too."

As she's walking back towards the kitchen, a big bearded guy barges through the door, flicking his sunglasses up on his forehead. Heavily tattooed and wearing a biker jacket – Sansa can tell straight away that he's only passing through, probably on his way down south.

"Who's that dog with?" he says, deep-set eyes squinting against the green neon light, pointing behind him in the direction of the parking lot.

Sansa stops in front of the kitchen door, securing the coffeepot against her chest. "Me," she says.

Then, much to her surprise, a grin spreads across the man's face, yellowed teeth showing through the bushy grey beard.

"Damn fine dog you got here, girl. Good beast."

Sansa smiles. "That he is. Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

 

 

There are moments during the day when she half expects Ramsay Bolton to walk in, with that wild-eyed stare of his, that feral smile. But the hours drag on and in the end she stops waiting, or rather she stops fearing what will happen if he does show up. If he walks in she'll serve him like she does everyone else. There's nothing he'll dare to do here at the bar, and he won't approach her outside, because that would mean facing Ghost.

Sansa doesn't quite know what it is about Jon that has the men of the valley worried - it's things that happened while she was away, stories of hanged men and guns going off at night in the woods and fresh mounds of earth in that corner of the cemetery below the old willow tree. And before that, there'd been other stories, like the one about the Lannister cousin who offended Dany Targaryen, and how they'd found him on the side of a road with his legs scraped raw like he'd been dragged alongside a fast-moving car. And of course there was the one about good-for-nothing Janos Slynt, who fell on a saw at the mill, because he was drunk, the sheriff said (or because he’d provoked Jon, the story went).

Ghost's presence is a warning in itself – that to go against her would be to go against the Targaryens, with their willingness to play with fire and their infamous temper, that lust for blood.

She doubts any Bolton would be that reckless.

She gets off in the afternoon, once Shae has finally appeared to take over with an apology of biscuits and cans of Coke for the boys. Outside the bar, she finds Margaery waiting in the old rattan chair, with her legs extended over Ghost's back and her hands tucked in the pockets of her short fur-lined jacket.

"You could have come in," Sansa exclaims, leaning down to wrap her arms around her and kiss her frozen cheek. “I'd have given you coffee.”

"Cersei would have killed you," Margaery says. 

“You two still not seeing eye to eye?”

“You know the woman. If she could have kept her boys with her forever she would have. It’s even worse that Tommen actually likes me.”

Even her smile has been stiffened by the cold. Sansa promptly goes down for another hug, rubbing their cheeks together in an attempt to transfer some of her warmth, while Margaery wrinkles her nose against the grease and warm beer smells of the bar, which still linger on Sansa’s clothes and skin.

“I don’t have the car,” Margaery says by way of apology. “I’ve yet to recover it from my dear sister-in-law. But I thought I’d walk back with you. Keep you company. Unless you were going somewhere, and in that case I can come with.”

“I was thinking of swinging by Benjy’s. But I’ll be glad if you come along.”

“Benjy’s,” Margaery repeats. “Okay. Sure. I could do with a beer someplace they don’t hate me.” She slips her arm under Sansa’s. “Off we go, then.”

To her credit, she waits a good ten minutes before starting in on the questions, muddling the waters with talk of the new girl at the hairdressing salon, and how her brother had called from the city, and Tommen had come home with another stray cat, like their house was a refuge or something.

“So I tell him, God, you have to let this one go, I don’t care that it’s cute and missing an ear and you already found him a name.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, yeah he did. Pirate, because of the ear. I could have told him that made no sense, but my priority was really to get rid of the thing. Wouldn’t Rickon want a cat? Or ten?”

“Maybe,” Sansa laughs. “But he’s not getting any.” 

“Speaaaking of getting some."

Sansa follows Margaery's eyes to where Ghost is running ahead of them, soft-footed along the side of the road.

“I had a run-in with Ramsay Bolton last night,” Sansa says. When Margaery rounds up on her she hastens to add, “Nothing happened. He just tried to scare me. Jon thought I’d be safer with the dog.”

“So he’s with you on this.” Margaery nods. “That’s good. It changes things.” 

“I’m not sure. I have a feeling he doesn’t want to get involved.”

“Honey, he is involved now, whatever he’s been telling you. And he could have done it more discreetly. Not wanting to get involved’s like, handing you a gun and checking in on you every day or so, you know? Not giving you that albino wolf and spending the night.”

“Mel,” Sansa hisses through gritted teeth.

“Yeah, well, somebody was gonna talk. The guy lives on the other side of the forest. He sleeps at your place, he’s making a statement.”

“It was my fault,” Sansa mutters. “I was...We were coming back from the Boltons. I asked him to stay.”

“I see.” Margaery’s smile turns mischievous. “What kind of comfort are we talking about? Sweet and soft, just the relief of being safe in his manly arms? Or the other kind?” She gives a passable imitation of Jon’s gruffness. “On the bed, girl. I’m gonna give it to you good.”

“Oh my god.” Sansa gives her a shove and Margaery totters for a few steps, her laugh echoing around them as if the valley itself had decided to mock Sansa.

“This ain’t how it is,” Sansa insists.

“For your sake, I hope not. It ain’t me who’ll give you a lesson about men you shouldn’t sleep with. But a man like him, it’s like... going into a fight with a broken bottle. You’ll make a lot of damage, but it’ll be messy and you’ll cut yourself.”

“You ain’t making any sense.”

“Fine. I’ll put it differently.” Margaery pulls her to a stop, holding on to her hands. “Darling, don’t fall for the wild ones. There’s enough wildness in you as it is.”

 

 

Sansa hasn’t been to Benjy’s in a long time. Not so long that it should be so strange, though, like she’s somehow travelled back through time. It’s the general atmosphere of these past few months that does it, this impression of a homecoming, with every place she goes to and every person she sees bringing up memories and nostalgia.

Her first date with Joffrey happened here. She’d ordered a Coke and she was so nervous – dazzled by the Lannister name and the football jacket and the smugness, by the fact that he’d picked _her_ , a junior... And when she broke up with Joffrey, or rather, when Joffrey dumped her, it happened here, too, right outside one of the big square windows as his friends watched from within.

But Benjy’s was also watery cocktails with Margaery as they talked about boys, and rowdy weekend outings with Robb and Arya and Bran before Bran's accident, and sharing milk shakes with Theon whenever he had his eye on a girl from school. They’d sit on the same side of the booth and sip from the same straw and Sansa would think, _it’s almost like a kiss, maybe one day he’ll notice that I’m a girl, too._

In retrospect, she’s rather glad he never did.

“What are we having?” Margaery asks, dropping into what used to be their booth, chucking off her scarf and gloves.

This is supposed to be a mission of sorts, but Sansa can’t resist saying, “Blue Flamingo?”

Margaery grins. “Old times, Birdie.” She taps her fingers against the pale blue covering of the seat. “They’re never gonna change these. If we come back in ten years, it’ll still be like we’re back at school.”

“Hey girls. What can I get you?”

Margaery looks up at the waitress, bright-faced still, for a second maybe. Then understanding begins to dawn, and her smile turns sly. “Hey, Kyra. We’ll have a Blue Flamingo, two straws.”

Kyra nods and walks back towards the bar. Margaery turns towards Sansa, leaning across the table to whisper, “You do know he brought you to make her jealous, back in the day? He treated her like shit.”

“That’s Theon, though. I’m not sure there’s anyone he hasn’t treated like shit, at some point or another.”

Kyra returns with the drink, which is as garishly blue as in Sansa’s memories. “There you go.”

“I feel like I haven’t seen you in years,” Sansa says. “How have you been?” 

“Oh, okay.”

Margaery lifts her eyebrows at Sansa. _Well, this ain’t gonna be easy._

“Have you seen Theon recently?” Sansa asks. Maybe she’s imagining it, but Kyra looks uneasy suddenly – more so than a minute ago, when she simply looked withdrawn. Plucking a pen from her hair, she starts twirling it around her fingers. Like the rest of Benjy’s, she hasn’t changed much. Sansa could swear that her red nail polish is the same as it was two years ago, as is her hair, jet-black with the tips dark red, pulled into a high ponytail.

“He ain’t around, much.”

“That’s not an answer,” Margaery notes. “I’ll make this easy for you. When was the last time you  
saw him, _exactly?_ ”

Kyra’s dark brown eyes move from one girl to the other and back again. She seems at a loss for words. Sansa wonders what possible cause she could have for being afraid – could Ramsay and his cronies have bothered her?

“Two weeks ago,” Kyra says. “He looked... He looked old.”

“Excessive consumption of drugs will do that to you,” Margaery says pleasantly, pulling the tall glass towards her and sipping from the straw. Sansa shoots her a reproachful look.

“Do you know when you’ll be seeing him again?” she asks.

“He doesn’t... We’re not seeing each other,” Kyra says. “I hadn’t seen him in weeks when he came by, and he was all... Weird. Paranoid weird. Like he didn’t know where he was and he thought someone was out to get him.”

“Ramsay?” Sansa asks, stealing the glass from Margaery.

Kyra bites her lips. “Maybe? He kept talking about your brother, though.”

Sansa freezes, her teeth clamped around the straw.

“What did he say?” Margaery asks, and when Kyra’s not forthcoming enough, she slides towards the edge of the booth and grips her by the front of her uniform, pulling her against the table. “Hey. What did he _say_?”

Kyra takes a step back from the table. She looks ready to bolt – and then she starts talking, like a dam breaking. 

“Nonsense, really. He was high. It was just about these nightmares he’s been having. He wakes up in his sleep, and Robb and him are buried together, and then he really wakes up, and Robb’s still there lying on him and he can’t get up. He said stuff like, _There’s worse ways to go_ , or, _That’s how I should have gone, but his grave won’t hold me._ Things like that. I figured it was the drugs talking. When he’s...”

“Sansa. Sansa!”

Sansa doesn’t listen, stumbling away from the table and out of Benjy’s, and she’d have kept going if she hadn’t found Ghost waiting on the sidewalk, right where she’d left him. So she drops to her knees and buries her face in the dog’s fur, trying to ignore the voice that tells her, _But you knew. You’ve known all along._


	5. Bed Sheets

She shines the flashlight on a patch of broken leaves and cold ice. Ghost is running up ahead. She can't always see him, but he makes enough noise for her to know where he is, stepping on twigs or weaving in and out of bushes. She just has to make sure that she doesn't stick too closely to the path he's taken, because there are places a dog can go where a girl can't follow. Pits that she won't see in time, thorn bushes and slippery stones.

She tries to focus on the small circle of light before her, and on the sounds of the forest. The call of an owl has her pausing for a second, head lifted towards the night sky, and sometimes she hears something scurrying under the bushes. For the most part however, the only sound is the wind, a prolonged howl as if there'd been some grief-stricken ghost running around the woods, tearing out its hair and snatching its clothes away from the grasping branches of the trees.

Maybe that ghost is her ghost. The night tends to encourage such thoughts, and she's trying so hard not to think of Robb, buried somewhere and maybe her mother is beside him, their blue eyes open and unseeing and their mouths filled with dirt and bugs.

What she should think about instead is Theon. How will she get him to talk, now that she knows where he is? Margaery had grilled Kyra after Sansa had run out, and when they’d met in front of Benjy’s, Margaery had slipped a folded napkin in Sansa’s hand, _That's the trailer, don't go alone._

There's also the matter of how much Theon knows. Will he know the place, will he be able to point her to Robb's bones? Will it be bones, or a body still, half-decomposed? And should she want to find it, when that means the Boltons will be able to use the will, since Robb will have been proven dead?

 _"Bring back my blue-eyed boy to me,”_ she hums to herself, unless it’s for Ghost, since each time she stops singing the dog slows down and looks towards her. _“Bring back my blue-eyed boy to me... That I may ever happy be..."_

She left Margaery at the house, cooking dinner for Bran and Rickon. _I'll be home in a few hours._ The words had come out muted from the cupboard where she was digging for the flashlight, though Margaery wasn't fooled in the least, and when Sansa slammed the door shut she found her standing behind it with her arms crossed.

"You sure that's a good idea, Birdie?"

"I'm returning the dog," she said, pulling on her boots.

"If you need someone to hold you, I'll hold you." Margaery glanced back towards the living, where Rickon was drawing all over his homework and Bran was listening in without quite seeming to, a comic book open in his lap.

"Don't go," Margaery whispered.

"I'll take that hug when I get back," Sansa said, trying the flashlight and stuffing it inside the pocket of Robb's jacket. "Make sure Rickon’s in bed by nine."

"That what you call _a few hours_?"

"I'll be back by nine." And as she hovered on the doorstep, she confessed, "I don't know what I'm doing, Marg. I don't know what to do now."

"We'll work it out."

She probably meant it and Sansa will most likely take her up on the offer, as soon as she gets back. In the meantime the thought of Jon is far too tempting – of his arms around her, all that contained strength holding her up...

But when she reaches the northern border of the woods it's not Jon that she finds, smoking on the porch or doing whatever he does when he's alone (and maybe she doesn't know him that well, because for the life of her, she can't picture what that might be).

There’s a clothesline running alongside the house and Dany Targaryen stands beneath it, hanging bed sheets. The line was obviously put up with Jon's height in mind and Dany has to stand on tiptoe to reach it. Maybe if Sansa had turned away immediately, retreating under cover of the trees, she'd have been able to leave unnoticed. But she remains rooted to the spot, unsure of what she should think, unable to think of what she should do, and before she knows it, Ghost has run across the road and up to Dany, white tail swaying back and forth. Dany looks down at him and then at the forest. She raises her hand and gives a small wave.

Sansa shifts her weight from foot to foot. She reaffirms her grip on the flashlight. Eventually, when it becomes clear that she can't avoid Dany by running off into the forest, she waves in return.

Dany walks over to her with Ghost in tow and at last Sansa finds it in herself to take a few steps – to meet her, if not half-way, at least a little way off from the woods.

“You scared me,” Dany says. “Standing there under the trees.”

“I was just bringing back the dog.”

“Oh, you have to come in for a drink. I mean, there’s not much, but I’m sure I can fix you something. It’s gotta be a cold walk. Jon could have driven you, but he’s not back yet... He went to help with a tree that fell onto the Mormonts’ barn.”

 _Look at you, playing house,_ Sansa thinks. She tries to check herself. If one goes by family ties, Dany is Jon’s aunt, his father’s younger sister. It makes sense that she should visit her nephew, especially since they’ve always been close, maybe due to their proximity in age. But Sansa’s gaze keeps straying towards the bed sheets, which rise and fall with every gust of wind.

“I won’t trouble you.”

“Nonsense. Come in, please.” Dany takes a hold of her wrist and exerts a subtle pull. “You don’t have to stay long if you don’t want to. But I did want to see you.”

Sansa follows her reluctantly across the road. All the while, she’s trying not to look at Dany and looking anyways, at her slim figure with the swaying braid of white-blond hair, and at her pretty face, soft and thoughtful but with something spellbinding about the eyes, a little frightening at times. Sansa’s always thought that Dany looked very much like Jon, though now she comes to see differences as well. Jon frowns when he’s lost in thought, when Dany’s face remains serene. Dany however can’t seem to abide a silence without smiling or moving, and Jon can stay still, frighteningly so. It’s a trait he shares with Ghost.

“I was wondering where he’d gone,” Dany says, as she precedes Sansa into the kitchen and goes straight for the liquor shelf, rising as high as she can to pluck a bottle of whiskey. “Last night, I mean. He said you had trouble with the Boltons?”

As Sansa can’t think of any answer that doesn’t begin with, _Aren’t you married?_ , she remains silent, moving to stand against the counter without being aware, at first, that she’s gone and retraced her steps from the past fall. Then she feels the edge of the counter digging into her lower back. _Targaryen enough for you?_

She steps forward, heart beating fast against her ribs.

“I’ll deal with my own troubles,” she says.

“Starks,” Dany smiles, pushing a glass towards her. “Your pride will be your downfall.”

“We’ve all got our flaws.”

Dany’s clear eyes meet hers, and Sansa knows that they’re thinking the same thing, a hundred different sayings that all have this in common that they are curses against the Targaryen bloodline.

_A family of snakes._

_The sons are dangerous and the daughters are vicious._

_Devil’s laid a claim on them, and they repay him in fire and blood. A kiss from the Targaryen girl’s ten years bad luck._  
Sansa would have outgrown these rumors if there hadn’t an element of truth to them. After all, wasn’t it Dany’s madman of a father who’d started the fire that led to the deaths of Sansa’s grandfather and uncle? And what about Dany’s brother Viserys, who was known to fly into rages, and whose body they’d recovered in the gold mines, without ever finding out if he’d fallen, or if someone had pushed him?

Yet in these mountains there’s little to hold onto but family ties, even when the name comes along with a poisoned inheritance – even when, as in Jon’s case, the name doesn’t come along at all, because his father was already married when he met Lyanna Stark, and then he’d gone and drowned before Jon’s birth, so that no one will ever know if he meant to acknowledge his bastard son.

 _Jon’s a Stark too_ , she thinks, with some desperation. It’s hard not to feel dishonest, when she’s spent the better part of her life denigrating him for being too much of a Targaryen.

“You’ll get him killed,” Dany tells her. “Damn you, girl. You’ll get him killed.”

Sansa knocks over the glass, and with a glance at the copper-colored puddle sinking into the wooden table, she says, “I’ll deal with my own troubles. You keep your curses. You keep your man.”

With that she stomps out, and as she heads for the woods, she promises herself that this is the last time she leaves this house with tears in her eyes.

 

 

 

Dany was right; the night is cold. Too cold for thoughts, which is a relief, but without Ghost running ahead of her it also means that it takes her longer to reach the house than it otherwise would have. When she gets there, her teeth are chattering and her limbs are so laden that she moves as one block, throwing her weight from one step to the next. She's looking forward to warm food, to Margaery fluttering around her like a hummingbird and to Bran at her elbow, making sure she remembers to bring the fork up to her mouth.

Yet when the house comes into view, another surprise awaits her. There's a car parked out front, of a kind that doesn't fit in around here, dark and sharp and covered in dust from the drive. Had she still been in the city, she might have had trouble placing it. But here there's only one person she can think of who’d travel this far with such a disregard for what is and isn't the norm.

She finds him in the kitchen, leaning against the sink with his arms crossed over an off-white sweater that must have cost half as much as the car. He's smiling when she comes in, talking to Margaery, but the smile changes when he sees her. It becomes more secretive.

He’s come as the idea that she’d first formed of him, rather than as his real self. The polar opposite of the men around here, with his expensive clothes, his elegant haircut and his trimmed moustache. His leather shoes shine under the overhead lamp.

“What are you doing here?”

“You called,” Petyr says. “And apparently you no longer have a phone, which made it... difficult...? To call you back.”

Stealthy fingers wrap around Sansa’s arm. Margaery steers her towards a chair and begins to tug down the sleeves of her jacket.

“Why don’t you have a bite to eat, honey? I’ll heat up the stew.” As she pulls the jacket off Sansa’s shoulders, she adds, lower, “What do I do?” And beneath that question, in every one of her quick, light-fingered touches, Sansa hears another. _What happened, what’s wrong?_

“It’s fine,” Sansa tells her. “You should go home. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Margaery doesn’t seem convinced, but she knows better than to insist. She gives Sansa a hug and walks around the table, which is when Sansa notices Bran, as Margaery leans down and plants a kiss upon his dark hair. As always it’s hard to tell what Bran is thinking, but she doesn’t need him to frown or speak out against Petyr to know that he disapproves of this visit. And in his solemn silence there’s so much of Jon and her father and every proud serious Stark before them that Sansa suddenly finds her footing. She remembers herself.

“You didn’t have to come all the way,” she says, once Margaery has left. Behind her Bran has moved to the hot plate to warm up the stew.

“There didn’t seem to be any other way to check on you. How have you been?”

“Okay.”

Of course he won’t buy it, if only because their understanding of the word differs widely. To him it’s not possible to be okay when you live in a house without a phone, wearing hand-me-downs and eating a so-called “stew” that’s 90% water and 10% scrawny potatoes. He sees the nakedness of the woods, not their haunting familiarity, and the rusticity of their dwelling, rather than the ways in which the clutter and the exposed cement and timber can qualify as shelter.

“No news from your mother or brother, then?”

“No.”

She hesitates. Though it’s true that he doesn’t fit in – and she’s seen the way he tries to keep his white sweater away from the pile of unclean dishes at his back –, she does appreciate his coming to a place he must despise. It was one thing to seduce her when she lived in his house, a girl from the backwoods transplanted in the suburbs of a big city, naïve and hopeful and so willing to be corrupted. It’s another to venture into these backwoods himself, when he’s so ill-equipped to face whatever might come his way. His tailored pants and his manipulative charm don’t mean much in a country that trusts blood and dust before it does words and appearances.

“They’re trying to steal our house,” she admits. “They’ve got a will – they said they did, and I had it confirmed by a lawyer. Apparently Robb left them the property... Everything. The house and the woods.”

Bran sets down a bowl before her and she dips her spoon into it, though she can’t quite bring herself to eat. Petyr pulls up a chair beside her and takes a seat.

“Who’s they?” he asks.

“The Boltons, the Freys. The Boltons have had their eye on our woods for some time. The Freys’ve had a grudge against us since Robb turned down one of their girls.”

“I see.”

“I’m trying to... I’m trying to find Robb.”

“They want her to marry Ramsay Bolton,” Bran intervenes. “They spread word that she’d say yes.”

“It would be a practical solution,” Petyr notes, holding up a hand to forestall Sansa’s protests. “You can’t deny it. I’m not talking about the man’s character, I don’t have the first idea who he is. To be frank, I’ve always considered all the men from around here to be one and the same. But a girl alone in this kind of retrograde country, you’d do better to get married.”

“Ramsay is a monster,” Bran says. “In four years, I’ll be of age, and then Sansa can go on living with me if she likes and no one will dare say anything.”

“You people were always too close for comfort,” Petyr mutters. “This being said,” he adds, in his usual tone of courteous dishonesty, “I admire your devotion to your sister. It’ll be of no use whatsoever, but it’s admirable.” He turns back to Sansa. “I meant what I said before you left. You can always come to me for help. You... the three of you, you’re my beloved nieces and nephews. Your aunt and I will always be here for you.”

Throughout this stirring speech, he’s looked at Sansa, and Sansa alone, so that there’s little doubt who it is that he means to help – and how little he’s told Lysa.

“Thank you. But I don’t think there’s anything you...”

“Think on it." He reaches out to touch her knee. Sansa nods, trying not to look at his hand.

It’s so strange to have him resume his advances here, where his touches lack the audacity they seemed to have in Lysa’s house, in that empty suburb with the sun beating down upon the blue tiles of the swimming pool. There she'd fantasize for hours about the way his eyes had slid over her skin as she swam, about his hand grazing her bare shoulder as he passed her on his way to the coffeemaker. So that by the time it finally happened – Petyr cornering her in her room, one warm afternoon in mid-August – it had seemed rehearsed, but also unreal.

If she didn't dream Petyr's come-ons, she might as well have dreamt the effect they had on her. All of a sudden their games seem futile, a callback to a time when time had to be filled because the avoidance of boredom was the first concern of her untroubled mind.

"I was wondering if I might stay," Petyr says. "I'll leave in the morning, but I'd rather not drive so late at night. I expected to find you home when I got here. I realize now that was stupid of me."

"Of course." Sansa puts down her spoon and pushes away her unfinished plate. "I'll make up a bed."

"Naturally, I don't want to trouble you..."

"We have plenty of beds," Bran says. "It's fine. Jon stayed over last night."

"Jon," Petyr repeats. "Your cousin Jon, who lives ten minutes away?"

Sansa could point out that it's ten minutes by car, not by foot. She could also remark that if Petyr means to help, he could get them a new one. But it’s much easier to be spiteful. So she leaves in silence and lets him wonder.

He joins her in her parents' room, as she unfolds clean sheets to replace the ones her mother last slept in. She hadn’t had the courage to change them until now. In this at least, Petyr's presence is a blessing.

"I brought you something," he says, and throws a box onto the bed. Sansa looks down.

"A phone?"

"So you don't have to borrow the neighbors’. And I programmed my cell number, so that next time you'll be sure to reach me." He comes closer and tucks a lock of red hair behind her ear. It's a soft-enough touch, but there isn't much tenderness to it. Petyr isn't a tender man. She learned as much the past summer. He has his wants, and he takes them out on other people.

"Thanks," she says.

"I missed you, you know that? My little mockingbird."

His hand moves to her chin, his grip playful at first and then painfully harsh. He holds her jaw in place as he kisses her, much as he would have back in the sun-baked house, as if he’s worried that she’ll struggle, or as if that’s precisely what he wants – for her to fight back.

"I didn't have time," she says, when he finally gives her enough room to breathe.

He draws back a little further, watching her. It takes this sly look for her to remember how clever he is. He might let himself be distracted like any other animal, but he’s not without cunning.

"Time for what, my dear?"

"To miss you. Maybe we can pick up this conversation some other time. When I don’t have to put bread on the table for three, and the men who killed my brother aren’t after my woods.” She shakes herself free and gives him her haughtiest glare. “Last summer you wanted me because I was young and I had no idea what I was doing. Think about this first, maybe. What you’re getting into.” She lets the sheet drop upon the bed, with more weariness than anger. “You know what, make your own bed. Start gaining some perspective.”

On her way out, and as she slips the phone into her pocket, she adds, “You should probably sort things out with your wife as well.”

 

 

 

That night, she locks her door. She doesn’t fear him so much as she fears what she would do if she were to awake to a man climbing inside her bed. Ramsay’s threatening gait is still fresh enough in her mind that she might stab Petyr before she recognizes him.

Then again, to be caught unawares she’d have to fall asleep, and it proves more difficult than she’d have thought, no matter how tired she may be. So much has happened without there being anything resolved that her mind keeps running in circles, with thoughts of Ramsay’s grasping hands and Dany’s soft-spoken curses and Robb’s unmarked grave. And in the intervals between harried snatches of sleep, she keeps her ears open for the shuffle of feet in the corridor, for the steady pressure of a hand on her door.

Eventually, she falls asleep long enough to dream of Theon. He's kneeling in the forest, under a white birch, digging the ground with his bare hands. He doesn’t look like the Theon she remembers, arrogant and handsome with his sleek dark hair and his infectious smile. There’s something wrong with his face, though as often with dreams it’s hard to tell what, and he casts her a look over his shoulder, hands black with dirt and blood, as he says, “Can I keep one? Not the skull, you can have the skull... But maybe a rib, or even just a finger. Please, Sansa. You know I...”

What wakes her is not so much a sound as a feeling. She sits up in bed, glancing at the alarm clock. 3am. The sky outside the window is dark. And yet there must have been something that roused her – if not in the room, outside.

She tiptoes towards the door on her bare feet, careful to avoid the boards that creak, and presses her ear against it. When she doesn’t hear a thing beyond the distant ticking of the kitchen clock, she goes to the other side of the room and peers through the window.

At first there’s only darkness, the naked hillside at the back of the house merging in with the sky. Then she makes out a shape in the yard. Standing still, its eyes glinting.

“God.” Sansa lets out a shaky breath. Cranking open the window, she puts her head through the opening. “You silly dog! You scared the _shit_ out of me.”

Ghost pads forward. When she extends her hand through the window, hissing at the feel of cold air on her bare skin, he sweeps a raspy tongue over her fingers.

“Give me a minute,” she mutters. Digging around, she unearths a shapeless grey sweater and a windbreaker to cover her pajamas. Then it’s a woolly hat and too-thin gloves for the cold, and a pair of hiking boots from under her bed, because she won’t retrieve her boots from the cupboard in the hall. This would mean running the risk of waking Petyr or her brothers, and all three have a tendency to be more alert at night than most people.

So she swings her legs through the window and drops down onto the hard ground below. Ghost begins to trot ahead and she follows, with her hands stuffed under her arms and her eyes trained on the ground before her, because the flashlight stayed in the cupboard with her plastic boots. As she passes the porch she clicks her tongue to warn the dogs not to launch themselves at her, though she can see them standing side by side, curious and hopeful: maybe they’ll be allowed to tag along?

She shakes her head no and goes on walking towards the woods. The cold makes her eyes sting. It creeps up her legs under the flimsy pajama pants. She refuses to question what she's doing here, in the middle of the night, without so much as a light to guide herself by.

And eventually, a light does appear, a tiny red spot flickering among the trees.

Jon is sitting on a rock a short distance away from the front yard, with enough trees to shield him from the house, but not enough to shield the house from his watchful eyes. He's smoking, and frowning, that much she can see, though when she sits down on the damp ground and leans her head against his leg, his hand immediately goes to her face, cold fingers brushing her forehead.

"That damn dog.” He holds the cigarette against her lips, and Sansa takes a grateful drag. "Couldn't let you sleep, could he?"

"What about you?"

"Needed to take a walk. Clear my head."

She tilts her head back. "Are you drunk?" Nose wrinkling because yes, she does smell whiskey on his breath, and the hand he’s placed upon her head isn't quite steady, though she leans into the touch anyways, closing her eyes with a shudder when he gives her hair a tug.

"The cold'll sober me up. That was the point. You get a visitor?"

"It's Petyr. Lysa's husband."

"Fancy car."

"He's that kind of man."

Jon lights another cigarette. For a second his face is bathed in a reddish glow, and she finds herself thinking, _Ah, there he is. The Targaryen devil._ But he throws away the match and suddenly he's Jon again, with his unmistakable Stark-ness – the long face, the dark eyes and beard. The match doesn't go out immediately and Sansa catches a glimpse of a dozen cigarettes butts or more, scattered upon the frozen ground.

"He there to help?"

"He says he missed me," Sansa says, just to feel the way his body jolts, his knee bumping against her cheek, his grip tightening upon her hair. "He calls me his mockingbird." Twisting the knife. "He's frustrated with his marriage I think, and I'm the shiny toy that reminds him of his youth, or something like that. He used to have a crush on my mother when they were teens. He told me."

Above her Jon has resumed smoking, a pretense at impassibility that would be far more believable if she couldn't feel his body thrumming like a too-taut string.

 _What are you doing?_ she wonders. _Trying to get a rise out of him, playing him like a fiddle._ And hours before, she’d told Petyr that she had no time for such games. _Robb. Robb is dead. Robb and maybe mother, too._ But she can’t bring herself to tell him that. She’s not ready yet, and she’s got a feeling that Jon isn’t ready to hear it, either. So instead she asks, irrationally, “What kind of bird do you think I am?”

“How the hell should I know?”

He sounds angry, and she’s about to apologize – by touch, rather than with words, her gloved hand reaching hesitantly for his leg – when the cigarette touches her lips again.

“What kind of bird are you?” he says. “You tell me.”

She breathes out a mouthful of smoke. “I don’t know. A goldfinch, maybe?”

“Are you wearing pajamas?” Jon asks suddenly, leaning forward. “Girl, are you _mad_?”

“I ain’t like you, I don’t usually go spending my nights in the woods,” she says, the taunt somewhat undermined by her chattering teeth.

“Go home,” Jon sighs. He gets up so that she’ll have to move or risk falling sideways. “What time do you start? I’ll take you.”

“Petyr can take me. You get some sleep.”

Jon is focused on his pack of smokes, trying to extract one despite his numb fingers, and she takes advantage of this momentary distraction to ask, “Why did you come?”

“Why did you return the dog?” Jon retaliates, cracking a match. A flash of red, eyes like burning embers. He throws down the match and crushes it underfoot.

“Dany and you,” Sansa tries, but the words won’t align.

“Dany and me?” Jon repeats, and she could swear that there’s mockery there, unusual and corrosive. “Pot, meet the kettle.”

“I’m going back to an empty bed,” Sansa says, chin lifted. “Are you?”

By day, she might not have dared. But this isn’t daytime. This is the blue-black night sky and its concealing darkness. This is Jon, haunting the edge of her woods.

Jon huffs. “Staking your claim, girl?”

“What if I am?”

“This won’t end well,” he warns. “I watch over what’s mine, and you’re the kind of bird that keeps getting caught in barbwire.”

She takes a cautious step forward. If she could, she’d ask him to repeat himself, dire warning and all, just for the resignation in his tone. Because it’s as good as him saying, _Fine, have it your way, I’m yours if you want me._ Another step and she’s against him. His arm settles over her shoulders, tugging her closer.

“Empty,” he mumbles into her hair. “My bed’s cold and empty.”

Sansa makes an indistinct sound against his neck, surprise and relief. They remain in place a moment longer, neither of them willing or able to do much more than sway gently against the other as Jon finishes his cigarette. Now and again he brings it to her lips, leaning in close to let her breathe out the smoke inside his mouth. Eventually he chucks the cigarette and kisses her, deep and slow, as Sansa clutches the back of his jacket with both hands and with the watchful forest quiet around them. When he’s done he doesn’t draw back immediately, but nudges her nose and whispers, _“Keep the dog,”_ stressing each word so that there can be no doubt that it’s an order. Sansa nods. Taking a step back, she holds out her hand and calls for Ghost, in a loving murmur: "Come, come. Come home with me."

They head back towards the house, the dog and her, and every few steps she turns around to look back at the forest. She wonders if Jon can still see her, with her smile like something inside her has broken and spilled outwards. And she’d contain it if she could, but the time for that is long past, so she climbs back inside her room with that same giddy smile upon her face, and when the dog climbs in behind her, she can’t find it in herself to kick him out, so she just rolls over and lets him sprawl among the covers.


	6. Crowbar

Petyr knows to pick his battles. So when Sansa walks towards his car with Ghost on her heels, he doesn't protest. The smile doesn't even leave his face, never mind that it's five thirty in the morning and that there's an enormous dog climbing onto his pristine backseat.

"Sleep well?" he asks Sansa, sliding behind the wheel.

"Not really."

"I have business to attend to in town, but I meant what I said. I want you to call me. And I'll give some thought to your situation."

"Okay. Thanks."

When he tries to stroke her cheek she turns away, leaning her forehead against the window, so he puts a hand on her shoulder instead.

"It might seem like there's no way out right now, but you'll make it through this."

She gives a vague hum of assent, and Petyr seems to understand, at last, that she's not in the mood for conversation. He squeezes her shoulder and returns his hand to the wheel and his eyes to the road.

The silence lasts for several peaceful minutes. Now and then, though, she catches him looking in the rear-view mirror at Ghost, and eventually, he gives in.

"That's your cousin's dog, isn't it? The cousin Cat had a problem with. The Targaryen boy."

"He's not a boy anymore."

He casts a swift glance at her. "I see. He lived with one of the girls from that trailer park that they razed to build the mill, didn't he?"

 _How do you even know that?_ It's no use asking, though. He won't tell her, and besides she suspects it's partly innate, this ability to find out things that shouldn't concern him, and to store them for when they'll turn out to be of use.

"She's gone."

"I see. And he owns half your woods."

"Is this going somewhere?"

"I would hate..." His hand flexes on the wheel. "I would hate for you to be stuck here. I know it's your home, but you did very well in the city. Don't revert to this... this cliché. The small town girl who marries her lumberjack cousin. Four children and grey hair before she turns twenty-five. You deserve better."

Sansa stares at him. "Are you done?"

"My dear..."

"Stop the car."

"I knew you wouldn't..."

_"Stop the car."_

"You're being ridiculous," he says through the open window, as she lets Ghost out and takes off at a brisk pace along the side of the road. He starts the car and drives alongside her, as slow as he possibly can.

"This isn't about you being hurt. You know it's the truth. Think of all that we talked about – I could get you through college. You could have your own flat. This can't be what you want. Working at a truck stop? Marrying a relative?"

She stops short and rounds on him. "Why is everyone so obsessed with marriage! I'm not getting married! I don't intend to! I want to stay a Stark and I'll stay a Stark. Now leave. If I need you I'll just call. That's how it works, right?"

"You'll change your mind, you'll see," he says. "Give me a call when you do."

 

 

 

It’s not that she’s never thought of it. Back when her father was in charge of the forest, and her mother was in charge of the house, she would have time to daydream about the future. In many of these daydreams, she was married, and quite often happily so. Living like a queen with Joffrey, in the big Lannister family house. Or tending to a quaint little garden on a rooftop, the exact same garden that she saw the one time she tagged along with Margaery to the city. They’d gone to visit Margaery’s handsome brother Loras, and the garden belonged to Loras, or rather, to the inhabitants of Loras’ building. It was a sheltered grove of roses and wisteria and tomato plants. In Sansa’s fantasies Loras fell madly in love with her and they went on to live a life straight out of a magazine spread, with tea parties in the garden, though she wasn’t quite sure what those entailed. The idea of a “tea party” sounded sophisticated, and perhaps they could have made rose tea. On rainy days she’d have sipped it from a porcelain cup, curled up in the window seat. In the background Loras would be using one of the many extravagant appliances from the varnished kitchen, the juicer or the bread maker or that thing that made dumplings, which Margaery and Loras had used to make dinner on the night Sansa had been there.

In time though, these dreams came to change. Sansa heard from Margaery that Loras had moved in with someone, a man, and it became difficult to go on thinking that he might have kept fantasizing about her, the way she’d been fantasizing about him.

When she started to work at the _Mountain Lion_ , she gave up on trying to picture what her life might look like after she left, focusing instead on the act of leaving itself. Sandor Clegane would snatch her from the bar and sit her beside him in his truck, and he’d ask, “Where do you want to go, little bird?”

At that point her idea of marriage shifted, because she could tell that Sandor wasn’t the marrying kind. He was too blunt, too unkempt, too rootless. Still, that’s what dreams were for. So she’d tell Sandor she couldn’t just leave like that, that she wasn’t that kind of girl (whatever that meant). And he’d turn his ugly face towards her, eyebrows furrowed, and grumble, “Fine, I’ll just have to marry you then.”

(The dreams stopped there, because she was never able to decide if she wanted to kiss him or not. There was something oddly alluring about his burned face, and the way his mouth had been twisted out of shape by the scars, like he was always grimacing on one side, like he’d been marked for unhappiness. Yet at the same time, his face frightened her too, as if it reflected an inner cruelty that he no longer had the luxury to hide.)

Then summer came. She went to live with Petyr and Lysa, and her vision of marriage fell apart. It might have survived Margaery's pragmatic Lannister weddings, but Lysa's possessiveness and Petyr's disregard for his wife’s feelings struck a chord with Sansa. Suddenly she saw the trappings of the institution, and its vacuity. It did little to incite daydreams and expectations.

So she resolved not to marry and she tried to curb her yearnings. Surely it would be safer to want like Petyr wanted, like Margaery wanted – like one might want cake, or a car, without compromising their feelings.

 

 

 

Her resolve hasn't wavered, but it's harder to be sensible when the thought of Jon makes her feel weak in the knees as if she was sixteen again. She's humming love songs as she clears the tables, and she’s gone and found that old plaid shirt of his, the one Ygritte had lent her, and she wears it tucked into her skirt. As the morning drags on, she tries to think of a way to convince Shae to swap her hours with her the following day, so that she can maybe see Jon come in after work.

"You're distracted today, Birdie," Cersei remarks, when Sansa lifts the wrong tray from the bar. Dirty glasses clink against each other as she makes a sharp turn and returns behind the counter to pick up the right tray, with its beers and iced sodas.

"No, I'm fine," she lies.

"Hmm," Cersei says. "Try not to bring your troubles to my bar."

Sansa mutters something to the effect of, “I wouldn’t dare”. She’s relieved when Cersei leaves her alone to return to her sparkling wine and her account book.

It takes less than an hour, however, for trouble to walk into Cersei’s bar, and when it does, it wears an unexpected face.

Though Stannis Baratheon had replaced his brother as sheriff some three or four years ago, Sansa has never had to deal with him personally, and she’s only ever seen him from afar at public gatherings, except for the one time he came in to break up a fight between the Clegane brothers.

There’s any number of people in the bar at present that he might have come to see, local fixtures whom Sansa knows for a fact have criminal records, and others whom she doesn’t know so well, but who certainly look the part. And yet, from the moment he comes in, his gaunt face frozen in an expression of permanent disapproval, she knows he’s here for her. She’s caught a glimpse of Ghost when Stannis opened the door, and the dog was hovering behind the sheriff with his teeth bared.

Stannis looks around him for a second, before he walks over, hat in hand. It’s rare that he’ll set out to deliver good news, but even then he’d probably look just like he does now: as if your family had died – as if he were about to sentence you for their murders.

“Sansa Stark. A word?”

“Can you order something first? So I don’t lose my job.” Since he didn’t say hello, she doesn’t either.

Stannis’s expression grows more sinister somehow, and for a brief moment she even thinks that he’s come to arrest her, though God knows what the charge would be. After another terse silence during which he stands stock still, turning his hat in his hands, he lets his shoulders slacken a bit.

“I’ll have a cup of coffee, then.”

His tone makes it clear that he’s none too happy with this development.

Sansa brings him the coffee as soon as he’s found himself a seat, but it takes her ten more minutes before she can find the time to speak to him. First she has to finish her round, handing out omelets and sausage rolls and topping up Old Pycelle’s coffee. Then, once the old man has tried to grope her ass with a trembling hand, she returns to Stannis’s table.

“What is it?” she asks, hugging the aluminum tray to her chest. Why would he be here, unless it’s to tell her that he’s found Robb, and that he needs her to identify the body?

“How long has it been since you saw your brother?”

His cup of coffee sits untouched in the middle of the table, next to a porcelain cup full of little packets of sauce, mustard-yellow and ketchup-red. And beside that, there’s his hat, brown and worn, though not as worn as the surface of the table, with its knife marks and its greasy varnish.

“When did you last see Robb?” Stannis tries again.

Sansa tears her eyes away from the table. “Last spring.”

“Have you heard from him since then?”

“We got a letter. He left a letter, to say he was leaving.”

It had been vague. _I love you,_ and _I met a girl_ and _I’m leaving_.

“Any idea where he could be?”

Two days ago, Sansa might have said something. Maybe she’d have mentioned the Fools' Mines, in the hope that Stannis would go and check them out himself. However, things have changed. If the Boltons have Robb’s will and Stannis finds Robb, she’s likely to lose everything, unless she can prove they killed him, which could be tricky. As of yet, she doesn’t even know what they did to him.

“Why are you after him?”

Though she isn't aggressive by nature, she can summon some ire when the occasion calls for it, like anyone around here. It’s a matter of loyalty and duty and pride: you defend your territory.

"I'm trying to help you out, girl," Stannis says. "Don't make this more complicated than it has to be."

"Help me?"

Sansa casts a quick look at the room behind her. All the patrons are pretending to be busy drinking and talking (and, in one notable case, spitting). Yet she knows that their attention is really focused on the small nucleus of their conversation, on her defensive posture and on Stannis's rigid features.

"How is this gonna help? All you're doing is making it look like I've asked for your assistance. I don't need nobody's assistance."

"I'm here as a favor," Stannis says, sounding increasingly more upset. "Davos mentioned your brother was missing."

 _Davos_. She'd have expected Melisandre to stir the pot, but not her husband. Oh, of course Davos will have meant well. He worships the sheriff, with whom he regularly goes fishing. According to Davos, Stannis is the most moral and uncompromising person he has ever met.

To Sansa this doesn’t sound like a compliment. In a country like this one, to boast such qualities when you have Stannis's resilience is like thinking you can straighten out a disobedient child with nothing but disapproval and a stick. She can already see how this will go: Stannis will question the Freys and Bolton in unequivocal terms, there’ll be dead things thrown on her doorstep, she'll disappear one night and reappear married and shell-shocked, and when the sheriff tries to intervene, he'll end up in a hole, maybe in the same field as Robb.

The only reason nothing of the sort has happened to Stannis so far is that in the years since he's come here, he's never had to venture in the mountains for anything more than one of Melisandre's slices of pie. Everyone knows not to talk to him – everyone, that is, but Davos, with his big heart and his own irritatingly unflagging moral compass.

So that in the end, all she says to Stannis is, "I don't need your help. I don't know what Davos told you, but we're doing fine. Robb will turn up."

She says it loud enough that Cersei will hear from the counter, as will the heavyset guy with the sagging cheeks who sits near the bathroom, and whom she knows is a Frey once or twice removed.

Stannis, however, is not one to be deterred by a stubborn refusal and a closed-off face. If that was the case, he'd have left years ago, and before he goes, he tells her as much, hat in hand as he measures her up with one last, penetrating stare.

"Don't think me more stupid than I am, girl. I'll be back, and you better hope it happens before you end up in an unmarked grave."

Once he's gone, she sees that he's left her a sizeable tip, which might serve as an accurate summary of the man – the kind who'd punch you in the face, and then hand you his handkerchief.

 

 

 

Stannis has hardly been gone five minutes that what she has been dreading happens: Ramsay Bolton walks through the door of the _Mountain Lion_. He comes on his own, wearing the ecstatic smile that has been haunting her for the past two days.

"Sansa!" he exclaims, as if he was surprised to find her here. "I'll have... well. What could I have. A glass of milk, please."

He picks a booth well in view of the bar. Sansa fetches the milk and sets it down before him with as blank a stare as she can muster.

"When was it we last saw each other? Two days ago? Wow. It seems like it's been ages. I meant to ask, did you get home safe?"

She begins to walk away, her grip tight on the tray, but his voice follows her to the counter, as persistent and maddening as the ringing in your ears after a detonation.

"I hope you did. It's not safe to climb into strange men's trucks like that, in the middle of the night. He didn't hurt you, did he? Woodsman Jon. Hey, Sansa. Sansa. I've decided I was hungry, too. I'll have..." He looks around him and his eyes fall on Old Pycelle's hunkering form. "I'll have an omelet."

It's a relief to slink into the kitchen, with its greasy smell and the dusty overhead neon under which Lancel is flipping burgers, his pale skin greenish in the artificial light.

"An omelet," she says, and leans against a table for a second, letting her blood cool down.

"Busy day," Lancel says. He's never been very good at conversation, but at present, it's a point in his favour.

"Yeah."

"I've put stuff aside for your dog. Turkey. It's clean and all, if you want to take it to him."

"Thanks," she says, and she must have miscalculated her smile – made it a tad too grateful, a pinch too sweet – because he’s suddenly quite red in the face.

She picks up the wrapped pieces of turkey and leaves through the fire exit, grateful to be provided with an excuse to avoid Ramsay. Following a remark from Cersei the day before, she'd brought a leash along and tied Ghost by the front door. Now she goes and removes the leash. It seems safer while Ramsay is around, both for her and for the dog.

It's while Ghost is digging into the meat and she's holding the leash that a thought strikes her. She’d grabbed the leash at random this morning, as Petyr waited in the car and she tried to run through the things that she had to do before leaving, sandwiches for the boys and taking out the trash and putting on an extra sweater so she wouldn't let her sneezes become a full-blown cold.

Now, however, her eye catches on the black letters written in permanent marker at one end of the length of frayed nylon. _Grey Wind._

It would be easy to find herself excuses. After all, she's been extremely busy since she came back. She didn’t have time to worry about a missing dog. Besides, it was only natural to assume that Robb would have taken his dog with him. And she'd asked, when she came home. It was one of the first things she said to Bran. _Did he take Grey Wind? Did he say he was going to take him?_ Bran said yes, which had seemed surprising but not that much, because Robb did take the dog along sometimes.

Now, however, she stares at the leash with Ghost sitting on his haunches at her feet, and it's impossible to ignore the rising feeling of worry that twists her stomach into knots. Ghost and Grey Wind were part of the same litter – them and Summer and Shaggydog and her own dog and Arya's. She's grown up with these dogs, and she's hugged Grey Wind more times than she can remember. The feel of his fur and his comforting dog smell and the way his body would rise and fall beneath her cheek – all of this is as familiar to her as the house and the forest and Robb himself.

Slowly she gets down, crouching beside Ghost with her teeth clenched, trying hard not to let this new blow overwhelm her. Ghost's head bumps against her hand,to provide comfort or to claim her attention.

Could they have killed him? It's entirely possible, if not certain. Unless Robb really is alive somewhere, living a carefree life with Jeyne and his mother and Grey Wind, the dog will have been killed alongside him. He'd have come back otherwise.

They both would have.

"I love you," Sansa whispers, her arms around Ghost's neck as she kisses the white patch of velvety fur above his nose, again and again, refusing to consider who she means, really, this dog or the other one, this dog's man or the other dog's, because in this moment it's hard to tell the difference and dangerous to wonder about the similarities, about the fact that Ghost moves and smells like Grey Wind much like Jon moves and smells like her brother did.

 

 

 

When she steps back inside the bar with Ramsay's omelet she finds him where she left him, waiting expectantly with his knife and fork in hand. He gives no sign that he's been put off by the wait.

"There you go." She slams the plate down and in her mind she snatches the knife from his hand and drives it through his neck. It's on the blunt side but that's fine. Enough hatred in her that she'd enjoy the required effort.

"You like dogs," Ramsay says, as if on cue. "I like dogs too. If I'd lost you the other night, I'd have sent them after you, and they'd have brought you back. You see..." He takes a bite of his runny omelet and goes on, chewing conscientiously, "there was really nothing to fear."

"Next time," Sansa says, her voice cutting and slow, "I won't tell him to put down that shotgun. I'll take it from him, and I'll use it myself. Enjoy your meal."

As she walks off, she hears him say, with what might be the slightest twinge of suppressed anger, "Do you know where I'm headed next? I have a meeting with Roose's lawyer at three."

She has her back to him and she can't help but smile.

_Oh, do you?_

 

 

 

The moment Shae arrives to replace her, Sansa swaps her flats for her hiking boots and calls for Ghost to follow her. However long Ramsay's meeting might take, it'll give her a head start, and if she cuts through the woods, she might even be able to get to the Boltons' and back before Ramsay returns.

This time around, she's far more cautious. There's no singing along the way and she keeps her ears peeled for the sound of a car coming up the road, or of footsteps, crushing the frozen undergrowth. She doesn't have to worry about Ghost. He's climbing ahead of her and perhaps because he sensed her wariness, he's more silent than he was the previous night in the forest.

The plan is simple: get to the trailer where Theon is supposed to be, grab him, drag him down the mountain. If she comes across a Bolton or a Bolton associate, she'll say she came for a word with Roose. If she doesn't find Theon in the trailer, she'll hang around in the forest for a bit, to see if he shows up.

She finds it harder to make up her mind about the dog. Jon's order still rings loud and clear in her head, and even if he hadn’t insisted, she would have had qualms about wandering up the mountain unaccompanied. Yet she's also deeply unsettled by the thought of Grey Wind, and it's hard not to associate the dog’s fate with Ramsay's jeering words. _I like dogs too._

At some distance from the trailer park, she stops under an outcrop of rock that serves as the entrance to a tumbled-down cave. It’s just a few square feet of white grass under the exposed roots of the trees. With some reluctance, she extracts the leash from her bag and ties it around Ghost's neck. She secures it around the trunk of one of the crooked trees.

"I'll be close-by," she tells the dog.

This is probably not what Jon meant when he told her to keep Ghost with her. It’ll have to do – she’ll just have to hurry. The trailer Kyra talked about is not far from the forest, so she’ll knock on the door and if Theon’s not there, she’ll double back and wait with Ghost near the edge of the woods. Or she’ll be cowardly and go home. It’s a tempting prospect.

Before she walks out of the woods, she makes sure to tuck her vivid hair under her woolen hat. The sun is low upon the horizon, and in some of the trailers the lights have already been turned on. There's a few people smoking in a row further up. At the end of the row ahead of her, a bunch of children are playing a game, their small quick-legged figures popping up from behind and under the trailers. Like the previous time Sansa was here, the atmosphere is deceptively peaceful: families taking some time off after a day’s work, with the children and the dogs running underfoot and above it all the shadow of Roose Bolton’s house, watching over this fiefdom like a castle of old, if old castles had had walls of concrete and a row of trucks parked out front.

There’s no light in the trailer Kyra indicated, and the blinds are drawn. Sansa checks the paper twice, but it has to be the right one. Aside from its situation, right at the end of the second-to-last row on the south-west corner of the park, it’s got a mismatched tire, and the blinds are the pale green of hospital scrubs.

Sansa gathers her courage. If it’d been her, Robb would have moved heaven and earth, and though his methods would have lacked subtlety, there's something to be learnt from his fearlessness.

Stepping towards the door, she lifts her hand and knocks.

She doesn’t get to step back – she doesn’t even get to withdraw her hand. The door swings open so fast that it knocks her hand aside and catches her full in the face. Tripping over her own feet, Sansa slips and falls hard on her back, her vision swimming.

Still she tries to rise - to get up and run before it’s too late. But before she can do more than rise onto an elbow, the pain in her head so strong she thinks she must have cracked her skull, a slender silhouette jumps down from the trailer and shoves her back down. The metal end of a crowbar grazes her cheek.

“You’ve got some nerve.”

Eyes blinking fast as she tries to force the shapes before her into clearly delineated contours, Sansa tries to edge away from the rusted metal. She recognizes the voice. It’s the girl from last time – Myranda. And she's not alone. A few more people have climbed down from the trailer behind her; Sansa can see their legs. Whenever she tries to move, the curved end of the crowbar follows her, digging into her cheek.

“Didn’t your Ma ever tell you you shouldn’t come barging into people’s homes like that?” Something about Myranda's sing-song tone is eerily reminiscent of Ramsay.

“I didn’t barge,” Sansa manages to say, despite the pounding in her head and the threat of the crowbar close to her mouth. “I knocked.”

“Gee, this one’s got a mouth on her. Doesn’t she remind you of anyone? No? Not even her cute brother? You two used to be friends, didn’t you?”

Sansa’s head whips around at that, to hell with Myranda’s tight grip on her crowbar. One of the pairs of legs behind the girl must belong to Theon, and sure enough, now that her vision has cleared she can make him out. He might be standing with his shoulders hunched and trying very hard to look away. She’d know him anywhere, would have known him from the long legs alone.

“I’ve come to talk to Theon,” she says, with as much confidence as she can, though inwardly she’s starting to waver. Of course she knew she might not find Theon in the best of shapes. She’d been ready for him to be high and not very communicative. But this is different. This is Theon standing by as someone slams a door in her face. The Theon she knew had many flaws, but he’d have broken the jaw of anyone who’d have so much as dared touch her without her consent. When she’d agreed to date Joffrey, she’d been worried that Robb and Theon would beat him up just because they didn’t like him, never mind that she’d expressly told them that she was in love.

“I told you,” Myranda says. “There’s no Theon around here.”

And with that she swings the crowbar, bringing it down hard across Sansa’s face.


	7. Downhill

“You’ve got to let her go,” someone says. Not Theon, someone else. A Bolton, a Frey. One of the unidentified pairs of legs. It doesn’t matter.

Sansa’s curled up on the frozen ground, her hands over her face. Once she got past the initial shock she tried to run, but Myranda and one of the others (not Theon, someone else) had kicked her in the stomach and ribs a few times, making sure she’d stay in place.

“He’ll be back, and he’ll be pissed when he hears you’ve hit her. He wants to marry her, right?”, the guy says.

“She’ll never marry him,” Myranda scoffs. “Not willingly, at any rate. She’ll have to be forced into it.”

“What about Snow?”

“Jon Snow won’t come after me. That was the whole point of me taking care of this. I’m a girl. He won’t lay a hand on me.”

“I heard he killed his girl,” another voice says. From the way it sounds, like a broken whistle, it’s likely to be one of Walder Frey’s sons or grandsons. “It’s the kid from the mill told me that. He buried her in them Stark woods.”

“He’ll fuck you up."

That’s Theon. Or rather, the pitiful excuse for a man that used to be Theon.

“Oh, really?”

But the booted foot that kept her down lifts from her chest. Myranda lowers herself into a crouch, bringing her face close to Sansa’s. Her breath smells like whatever she’s eaten last, fried chicken or something of the sort, and it’s nearly enough to make Sansa retch, dizzy as she is. She tries to move away but there’s only so far she can go, with Myranda so near and holding her by the collar.

“Can you walk?”

Every inch of Sansa’s bruised body is screaming no, but she won’t risk saying so, not when every minute that passes makes it likelier that Myranda's menacing figure will be replaced by Ramsay’s.

“Yeah,” she crows.

“Pick her up,” Myranda orders.

Two pairs of arms haul her up, waiting until she’s found her footing before they release her. Sansa staggers but she manages to stay standing.

“Fuck, you did a number on her,” one of the guys says. “She’ll never get back on her own.”

“I…” Sansa coughs. “I can,” she tries again, firmer this time, though it takes much of the energy she’s got left to work around the iron bar that seems to press down upon her stomach, and to ignore the fact that she can’t open her left eye.

“You’ve heard the girl,” Myranda says. “Off you go, then. Run back to your woods, little shewolf.”

Though she’d like nothing more than to do so, Sansa knows she won’t be able to. She settles for a slow, clumsy shuffle in the direction of the trees. She’s not even covered ten feet that she hears Myranda sigh behind her.

“Carry her into the woods at least,” she says. “She’ll find her way when she remembers that she’s got feet at the end of her legs. And that we got dogs.”

The men obey, picking Sansa up under the arms again and dragging her forward. They drop her at the edge of the woods, right after the first trees, and she hears them walk back towards the trailer park, muttering to themselves.

 

 

 

 

There’s no saying how long she’d have stayed here, with her cheek against a patch of ice and her fingers grasping the air, if she hadn’t heard a whimper not too far off in the woods.

On any other day, it would have been an easy journey. Ten strides or so over a path that’s easy to follow, with the ground shining white under the moonlight. In her current state however, it’s a long, painful crawl towards the rocky overhang under which she’s left Ghost. When she finally arrives, she’s given up on trying not to cry, and her gloves are covered with dirt and wet with snow.

No sooner has she lowered herself down the slope at the side of the cave that Ghost is upon her, licking her neck, his soft fur brushing against her face. Sansa can barely muster enough energy to touch him, though when she succeeds in pulling off a glove and lifting a hand to his neck, she feels a wetness there, where the collar has chafed against his skin. After a few tries she manages to remove it, and she slumps back down, letting him lick her face, her split lip and her bruised cheekbone under the eye that’s swollen shut. With unsteady fingers she feels around his neck, trying to gauge the extent of the damage. He’ll have attempted to break free. Of course he’ll have felt something was wrong.

_Jon is going to kill me._

The untimeliness of the thought almost makes her laugh. She’d give it a try, if her ribs didn’t hurt so much. When she slips a hand inside her jacket to evaluate the damage, her fingers connect with a hard shape in the inside pocket.

Hissing as her hand grazes her ribs, she slowly pulls out the phone. The screen lights up in the gathering dark. This morning before she left, she’d found Petyr’s name at the top of the contact list. The first thing she did was add Margaery’s number. She knows it from memory still, a relic from their high school days. So that now she doesn’t even have to type it – she just has to hit the call button.

“Yes?”

Sansa sucks in a rattling breath, releases it with her eyes shut against the pain.

“Marg? It’s Sansa.”

“Sansa? What’s going on? … Your voice is weird. Where are you?”

“Mountain.” She won’t cry. Not just yet. “I need you… Need you to come and get me.”

 

 

 

 

She could stay put and wait, but drowsy as she feels, she knows it isn't safe. The trailer park is still close enough that she can hear its rumor upon the wind. And in the state she’s in, it would be foolish to stay motionless for long, even if the little cave-like recess and Ghost’s warm body are protecting her from the worst of the cold. So she pulls herself up, holding on to roots and tufts of dry grass, and she begins to head down towards the road. Ghost walks against her, and with the knowledge that Margaery will be here soon, Sansa manages to make some progress, going from tree to tree, with one hand against their rough bark and the other clutching Ghost’s fur. She’s still someway off the road when Ghost suddenly leaves her, running down the slope, and before she’s had time to worry (or maybe she’s not conscious enough to do so anymore), he returns with two shadows in tow.

“Oh my god, Sansa,” she hears, the most comforting of sounds, and then she’s being hauled up by two pairs of arms again, her booted feet dragging across the faintly shimmering ground.

 

 

 

 

The next time she opens her eyes, she’s lying down in the back of a car, surrounded by warmth and the smell of leather upholstery. She tries to voice a question, but all that comes out of her mouth is a muted whine.

The car is moving, this much she knows. She can feel every bump in the road, shaking her battered body through the seats.

“Hold on darling,” Margaery says. “We’re nearly there. You’re safe. You’ll be okay.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you,” says another voice, youthful and bright, which Sansa identifies as Myrcella, Margaery’s sister in law.

She lets her eyes drift closed once more.

 

 

 

 

The light in the living room is much brighter than the lamp in the ceiling of the car, under which she’d lied for a moment as Myrcella ran in to warn the boys and Margaery tried to decide how to go about helping her. Eventually, she’d gone round the car and pulled Sansa out with both hands under her shoulders. At that point Myrcella had returned, and the two girls were able to carry her inside.

Now she lets them agitate themselves around her, pulling off her jacket and lifting her head onto a pillow and her feet onto the armrest of the couch. Bran drifts in and out of her one-eyed vision, holding a glass of water and then a basin and cloth, and then suddenly he’s at her feet, pulling off her boots. She hasn’t even seen him move. It’s as if her vision has become a series of slides from a projector, giving her images but not the links between them. Bran was at her side and now he’s at her feet. Margaery was above her and now she’s hanging the jacket over a chair.

Rickon holds her hand for a time, his grip as fierce as his angry blue eyes, and then he’s gone. She hears his feet thunder down the porch steps as other feet come up, much lighter, and then Myrcella and Melisandre come in. Melisandre is crushing pills with the back of a spoon and mixing them with water (“Those are for the pain,” she says, handing Myrcella a bottle, “and those too, but they’ll make her sleep like the dead, so make sure you don’t use them until you want to knock her out for at least ten hours”).

Now and then Sansa forgets that Myrcella is Myrcella and that Bran is Bran, so that is seems like it’s Cersei watching over her, and her father – she’d never noticed before how much Bran looks like him, with his long, narrow face and his sad eyes. Maybe she’s losing it, because there’s no way her father and Cersei would ever do anything together. They’ve always disliked each other, which Sansa used to think was their way of respecting traditions, rather than their inclinations: the Lannisters and the Starks have been at odds for generations.

Margaery sits at her side, holding a bag of something frozen against her swollen eye.

“You’re safe, baby girl,” she whispers, this and variations on the same theme whenever Sansa jolts under her careful hands. “No one will come for you here. Try to rest a little.”

She leans down and kisses the cheek that isn’t bruised, and the side of her mouth that isn’t caked with blood.

 

 

 

 

The next time Sansa’s roused from sleep, it’s by the sound of a commotion outside the house - the hum of engines, building up and dying down, tires screeching to a halt, doors slamming shut and voices carrying across the yard, female (pacifying, on the porch) and male (several, quivering with anger). Instinctively Sansa tenses up, and Margaery’s hand descends upon her shoulder, holding her down.

“Don’t worry, love. I’ll go see what’s going on.”

She’s barely risen from her seat that the front door bangs open, and the noise from outside is brought indoors. The voices keep overlapping. The undercurrent of anger courses over Sansa’s skin like a gust of hot wind.

“…is to provoke them, and that…”

“They provoked _me_ …”

“…she’s tired, you shouldn’t…”

“If they’re hitting women now, we have to…”

“I really think you men should wait outside,” Melisandre says.

Sansa has managed to rise onto an elbow, leaning heavily into Margaery’s side, trying to peer at the scene through her good eye. Melisandre and Myrcella are standing by the door, facing down an angry Jon. He’s come with some of his friends from the mill, the tall guy with the fiery red beard and two lanky dark-haired men that Sansa’s never seen, but who stare at her with a mixture of pity and astonishment. Adding to the general chaos, Rickon chooses this moment to run in with the three dogs hot on his heels. He disappears with Shaggydog, but Ghost and Summer veer towards her, and it takes Bran maneuvering his chair in front of the couch and catching a handful of fur on both sides to prevent them from reaching her.

“Rickon must have run to the mill,” Margaery whispers to her, her fingers cool on Sansa’s temple.

Jon turns towards her then, and his face falls. On anyone else, she’d have called it fear, this wideeyed, open-mouthed look. Fear, or the surprise that follows an unexpected slap. It lasts but a second before the anger returns, but it’s enough to chill her to the bone, for it’s a crack in what she thought was an impenetrable armor.

“What happened?” he asks. He’s looking at Margaery, not at her. “Ramsay?”

“No, a girl,” Margaery says. “We got Theon’s whereabouts out of that ex-girlfriend of his, Kyra. Sansa went there after work. Some girl beat her up with Theon and a couple other guys watching.”

“Ramsay?”

“He wasn’t there. He might have had a hand in it though, I don’t know. They dumped her in the Bolton woods and Cella and I picked her up.”

Then Jon does turn back to her, his mouth twitching like he’s withholding something – like she’d twist her own mouth if she were trying not to cry. She doubts that Jon would cry, though. His body radiates so much contained fury she’s surprised he hasn’t taken it out on anything yet. That’s what they used to do, him and Robb, slashing at trees with sticks whenever they felt like they had a grudge against the world.

But they’d been children then.

She’s heard of what an adult Jon might do. The hanging, bodies trailing through the dust, holding on to a man’s neck through the window of his car as he stomps down on the pedal. She used to have trouble reconciling these dark stories with the man she knew.

Though it does strike her now that she doesn’t know him very well.

“Why didn’t you take Ghost?”

“I did,” she says. “I left him in the forest.”

“You left him,” Jon repeats, pinching the bridge of his nose. He takes a deep breath. “Okay.” He turns back towards the men. “Tormund, get me a dozen guys. We’re going to the Boltons. Edd and Pyp, you stay outside, keep an eye on the place. Mel, get Davos to stay with them, tell him to bring his rifle.”

“Jon,” Sansa says, frustrated at how her voice immediately breaks, not giving her much breath to finish, “you can’t…”

“You can’t declare war on the Boltons,” Margaery completes for her, as she gives her shoulder a squeeze. Her hip is reassuringly warm against Sansa’s cheek.

“I ain’t declaring war on the Boltons!” Jon says, even louder, as if it’s a contest. He’s never been much good at keeping a cool head in a fight, this much Sansa remembers from their teens. “They declared war on me when they beat her up!”

“Don’t be such a man,” Margaery retorts. “Can’t you see that’s what they want? For you to make a mistake? They made sure to make it look like Sansa’d provoked them, trespassing or whatever excuse they’ll use. If you fall upon them with a dozen men they’ll say you did it unprovoked. Isn’t that why you didn’t want to get involved? Because it would escalate like this?”

“She’s right,” Melisandre intervenes. “I’d suggest you sleep on it. Wait until your head cools down.”

“The fuck if I’ll wait."

Jon is out the door before anyone else can speak against it.

Margaery and Melisandre exchange a look as the other men follow him outside.

“I’ll get Davos,” Melisandre says.

“Please,” Sansa whispers urgently, tugging the hem of Margaery’s turquoise cardigan. “Go. Make sure…Go.”

“I can’t shoot to save my life, you know that!”

Yet she goes anyways, once she’s lowered Sansa’s head carefully onto the pillow. She doesn’t even take the time to change out of her high-heeled boots, or to grab a coat.


	8. Shotgun Slugs

She thought apprehension would keep her awake, but whether it's Melisandre's pills or mere exhaustion, she soon falls asleep again.

The house is silent when she wakes up. She experiences a moment of blissful forgetfulness before it all comes back to her – the pain first, and then Jon’s anger, and Margaery heading for trouble because she was selfish enough to tell her to do so.

Turning her head a little, she looks around the room. Summer is snoring on the carpet and Bran sits motionless beside the couch, with their father's rifle across his knees. Not the squirrel gun, but the one Ned would take whenever him and his friend Robert went deer hunting.

"Are you thirsty?" Bran asks. When she gives a weak hum, he helps her lift her head and he holds the glass to her lips while she takes a few sips.

"Thanks," she mumbles. "Jon?"

"They're not back yet," Bran says. "But they're fine I think. Margaery texted you... The phone vibrated. I thought you wouldn't mind me looking, because if something happened you'd want me to wake you up."

"Yeah, of course... where…?"

Bran hands her Petyr's phone. Sansa works her way back through Margaery's messages and reads them from the start.

_6.08 > I assume that's ur number, so I'll text u if sth happens_

_6.08 > Don't assume we're dead if I don't_

_6.09 > Reception can be shitty up there_

_6.12 > I'll try to keep him from shooting any1_

_7.26 > Ok we're all good nobody dead_

_7.27 > Roose B was there_

_7.28 > Jon has a gift for u_

Sansa stares at the last message as if this will somehow clarify its meaning. All she can think of is Robb’s body, wrapped up in a blanket at the back of Jon’s truck.

“Do you think she means the will?” Bran asks.

She looks up at him, startled – yes, of course, that must be it, why does she always have to consider the worst possible outcome – unless…

“The will’s gotta be at the lawyer’s,” she says.

“Oh. What then? Ask her.”

Sansa goes to type, but something holds her back. Though she knows Margaery wouldn’t play with her, and that it has to be good news, it still seems easier to wait a moment longer, suspended in that state of not knowing when the gift might be just about anything. The will. The bloody imprint of Ramsay’s grin on a handkerchief. The bones of a dead Stark. Grey Wind, a little thinner, but alive. Grey Wind, dead. A living Stark, wrapped up in that same blanket that she’s only just dreamed around Robb’s corpse.

“They’re coming,” Bran says, just as she begins to hear it too, the distant rumble of the trucks coming up the road.

“Help me up,” she says. Whatever this is, she’ll meet it standing.

The only truck that stops in front of the house is Jon’s. The others go on down the road, two of them, full of men front and back.

Jon jumps out as Margaery climbs down more sedately on the passenger’s side, wearing someone else’s coat. As Sansa makes her way with caution down the stairs, holding onto the banister with both hands, Jon reaches back inside the truck. Grabbing a handful of dirty clothes and flailing limbs, he throws it in a heap at her feet.

“There you go,” he says. “I’d stick his head in a bucket if I were you. Feed him something. You won’t get him to talk otherwise.”

“I’ll do it,” Margaery volunteers, and without hesitation she stoops to where Theon is lying on the ground and gives his shoulder a gentle shake. “Come on, Theon. Let’s go clear your head.”

After that, Sansa expects Jon to come to her. They might be in public – Bran’s on the porch, as are Jon’s guys, Edd and Pyp, and Myrcella is smoking in the old deck chair, and Davos is standing right behind Sansa because he probably thinks she’ll fall if he’s not there to catch her (and he might be right). Yet that shouldn’t hold Jon back, not after what happened, not when he’s ten feet away and all she wants is to be held by him.

He doesn’t come, though, and instead he whistles for Ghost and pulls out a cigarette. She might have believed the charade if he’d managed to smoke properly, but it takes him four tries to get the cigarette lit, and even then he burns his fingers on the final match.

“Jon?” There’ll be time later to worry about the way her voice quivers, betraying to them all how much of her bravery relies on his stepping away from the truck and back towards the porch, where she’s still clutching the banister and feeling like her legs might give at any given moment. They’re making a scene. Another one, if one counts his storming into the house a few hours ago.

“Get some rest,” he tells her.

“Yes,” she says, because there’s no denying that she needs it. “With you,” she adds, softly insistent.

Finally, finally he does obey her, like a cord snapping, his steps jerky as he crosses the yard.

“I’ll keep an eye out tonight,” Davos says behind her. “You should go get some sleep.”

Jon stands below her on the porch steps. He looks like he’s just lost everything, like he’s standing outside the burning house and watching the fire.

“We’ll find his body,” he vows, his voice hoarse. “If that’s all we can get back, we’ll get it back. And I won’t let them take your house.” Letting go of his untouched cigarette, he reaches for her hand. “I’ll protect you. I won’t ever let them touch you again, I swear.”

Dark head bent over her hand, he kisses it, his grip tight on her fingers, his stubble prickling her skin.

The whole scene is unnervingly ceremonious, in the golden-brown haze of the porch light and with all the others watching, everyone frozen in place as if they were waiting for their cue. Maybe they’ll break into applause. Maybe Jon needed all these witnesses so that the next time he charges into danger, he can say, “I signed my death warrant the other night, six people can testify to it, I signed it with my stupid words and my reckless mouth.”

This isn’t what she wanted.

“You can’t protect me,” she says.

 _And then it’s your body I’ll be looking for._ All of a sudden it’s too much, this realization that whatever they do, they’re headed for disaster. Dany was right, she’ll get him killed. And it’s likely that he’s been thinking the same thing, and that this is what had him keep his distances until now, because he doesn’t have an answer for her. He just stands here with his sad eyes and the crease in his brow and it strikes her that while she’s been seeing Robb in him, he must have been seeing Robb in her.

“Let’s get you to bed,” he says. “Greyjoy can wait until tomorrow.”

He touches Bran's shoulder on the way in, and she sees them exchange a look that she doesn't like, the kind of non-verbal promise that’s only made more binding by the presence of a rifle across one's knees.

"I'll drive the girl home," Edd says, "but I'll be back afterwards."

"Go home," Jon tells him. "They won't be back tonight."

"Thank you," Sansa says. "All of you. I..."

"Don't worry about it," Myrcella says.

Sansa tries to smile, wincing as this small gesture pulls on her sore muscles and on her split lip. Myrcella and her have never been close, though the girl had been in Margaery's crowd before she became her sister-in-law. Sansa doesn't trust her, and even if she did consider her a friend, she'd still expect her to report back to her family, especially her mother. Cersei will get a detailed account of Sansa's bruises and if the Lannisters didn't yet know that Jon has thrown in his lot with her, they will by the time the night is over.

She leans heavily on Jon's arm as they make their way through the house. From inside the bathroom, where Margaery must have taken Theon, she hears snatches of an on-going conversation.

“…decide what you want...”

“Nothing... I don't want anything anymore...”

That last complaint is punctuated by what sounds like an ugly, broken sob.

"Here," Jon says, stirring her into her parents' room.

When he’d dressed down in her room, two nights and a lifetime ago, he’d discarded his things left and right, not caring where they fell. Now, though, he goes to put his jacket over a chair and his shoes on the ground beside it. It’s like he expects her mother to come in and look down her nose at him, just like she used to. The boy who stole forests, the boy her husband made the mistake of loving like a son.

When he kneels to unlace his shoes, she catches a glimpse of black plastic, the grip of a gun sticking out of his pants.

She drags herself onto the bed, trying to settle down in a position that won't put any weight on her bruised ribs.

"Your pills."

She jumps and Jon does too, the both of them turning to the door. Bran directs his chair towards the bed. He’s holding a glass of foggy water.

Jon’s hand had gone straight to his back. Slowly he lowers his arm. He lets his shoulders slump.

"The ones that'll help you sleep," Bran explains.

Jon takes the glass from him and leans across the bed to help her drink.

"I want them to die," she hears Bran say as Jon lowers her head onto the pillow.

She'd say something if her mouth wasn't so pasty and her eyes so heavy – the one eye, rather, the other being dead to the world.

"If it was up to me, they would," Jon says.

Gentle fingers stroke her forehead, sweeping back a lock of hair.

"But it's up to her.”

 

 

 

 

During the night, she sees her mother. Catelyn is sitting in front of the vanity with its chipped white paint. Jon's jacket still hangs from the back of the chair.

Sansa would go to her, go down on her knees in front of the chair and wrap her arms around her middle, but even in this dream state she feels heavy and sore. So she has to be content with watching Catelyn, the way her red hair catches the light slipping through the blinds, the apprehension in her pale blue eyes and the longing in her softly-lined smile.

"Mom," she croaks.

 _Help me_ , she wants to say. _You have to help me. It's crushing me, take it off, take the weight of it off me._

If Catelyn were here, she would know what to do – about the forest and the boys and even Lysa, if Sansa could work up the courage to tell her. And then Sansa could go back to being the daughter who dreamt too much, the one who fell hard and fast for the wrong men.

Catelyn's perfume is heavy in the air, as if Sansa had just knocked over the bottle on the vanity. _Orange Groves_ , it's called, and the scent is still here when she wakes up, lingering on the surface of things.

Her throat is parched and her ribcage seems on the verge of collapsing with every breath. During the night, someone has placed a fresh pack of ice over her face, though it's gone soft by now, and she can feel the coagulated mass of green peas through the damp wrapping. She lifts the pack off her face. Beneath it her eye is still stubbornly shut. She wonders if it's turned black. 

The light in the room is the light from her dream, the creamy light of a late winter morning. She's lying in the middle of her parents' bed, on her back, and the bed around her is full. There’s Rickon, draped over her legs and sleeping God knows how on his back with his mouth hanging open. Shaggydog’s curled up under his feet. On her left is Margaery, with her legs folded to leave space for the dog, her mass of chestnut curls like a soft pillow against Sansa’s cheek.

Sansa turns her head ever so slightly to the right. Because she's kept this for last, the sight of Jon sleeping with his body curved around her, his full lips slightly parted and his dark curls hanging over his face. Even asleep he looks confused and vaguely worried. Where his collar opens she sees a sliver of pale skin, and what might be a bullet scar.

He mumbles something without opening his eyes, and when she doesn't answer he repeats himself, a little more clearly, "How did you sleep?"

"Okay."

His eyes blink open. It can be hard to tell their color from afar, but from up close they're a clear, luminous grey. A shade lighter than her father's or Bran's. The same color as his mother, in every picture Sansa's seen of Lyanna Stark.

"How are you feeling?" His voice is nearly as hoarse as hers. She watches him as he rubs his eyes and covers a yawn. Never has she seen him so soft and unguarded. Yet she also knows that if she were to slip an arm around his waist, her fingers would bump against the plastic grip of the gun, made warm by a prolonged contact with his skin.

"Not so good," she admits. "What time...?"

"Around ten."

"Rickon should be in school," she says, looking down at the snoring child. Asleep, Rickon looks unerringly like Shaggydog. It's not rare to see him bat the air with a hand, or make little keening noises when he dreams.

"That boy is good at having things his own way, isn't he?"

"I thought that was all boys," she says. "Though maybe not the Jon Snows."

"Things don't often go my way," Jon admits in a whisper. "I did want to be back in your bed. I didn't think it'd be Ned and Cat's bed... or that you'd be drugged and with a hell of a black eye."

"That's how it's gonna be," she says. If her ribs didn't hurt so much, she'd punctuate that with a shrug. "You gotta take what you can get."

Jon's mouth twitches, a split-second smile. "I know that shirt,” he says. “You bled all over it.”

“I’m sorry.”

His mouth slides against hers. If she’d had her eyes closed, she might not have felt it, though she would have felt the parting kiss on the tip of her nose.

"Does it hurt?"

She lifts a hand to his face, fingers lightly stroking his cheek. "No."

"Good," he says, and trapping her hand in his he leans in for another kiss, more insistent this time, with his teeth catching on her lower lip. Sansa's still woozy from the painkillers and numb from the pain, and it's this – this and the morning light and the softness of the bed and the softness of Jon's lips, scratchy beard and stale breath aside – that makes her admit, in a strangled whisper, "I don't want to go back out there."

"I'll be with you," Jon says. "If you think I'm letting you out of my sight again... We're dealing with Theon, and then you're coming with me to the mill."

"I can't, I have to work."

Jon grimaces. "Sansa..."

"Don't," she whispers fiercely back. "I know what state I'm in but I need the money and Cersei loves nothing more than to cut down our pay when..."

"If it's about money..."

"I won't take your charity."

Jon shuts his eyes and draws in a steadying breath. "Sansa..."

"How about you take this conversation to the kitchen?" Margaery says, her voice muffled by her pillow. "Or go back to making out, I don't care, just quit your bickering."

"Can we do this everyday?" Rickon pipes up. "And Bran can come too, and Summer and Ghost! And we'll be like a pack. And when Mom comes back she can sleep with us, too, but maybe we'll put the dogs on the floor. I can sleep on the floor with Shaggy."

"Let's all get up," Sansa says, defeated.

But Margaery gives a slight kick to her shin and Jon is still holding her hand. Despite everything it makes it hard to be sad. It makes it impossible to be angry.

 

 

 

 

Margaery had left Theon on the couch, but when they walk into the living, the room is empty, as is the kitchen corner. Pyp is dozing off in the deck chair out on the porch, and Bran has left one of his messages in black block letters by the coffeepot ( _DAVOS TOOK ME TO SCHOOL. I DIDN’T WANT TO WAKE YOU SO WE LEFT RICKON. REST._ ). There’s no sign of Theon.

“D’you think he’d have gone back there?” Margaery asks, as she rises on tiptoe to peer through the window, scanning the yard and the forest beyond.

“I don’t think so,” Sansa says, even as she hears Jon calling from the bathroom, “Not here. He could have gone out through the back.” There comes a loud banging sound that tells them that Jon’s kicked something, presumably the plywood cabinet under the sink. “Fuck. Fuck.”

Margaery makes to move but Sansa halts her with a raised hand. “I’ll go. Don’t worry. If he’d left, the dogs would have warned us.”

She walks back towards their rooms, passing Jon who gives her a questioning look, and then her parents’ bedroom and her own. She stops at the very end.

The door on the right leads to Bran’s room. He used to share with Rickon, before the accident, and then they’d repurposed Ned’s workshop so he’d have more space, and at least one room in the house where he could move his chair without bumping into tables and shelves. But it’s the room on the left that she’s headed for.

And sure enough, there he is when she pushes the door, lying on Robb’s bed with his back to her and his black hair spilled over the pillow. It looks like someone has struck down a raven and scattered the feathers.

She’d come into the room first thing after her return from Petyr and Lysa’s, but she’s been avoiding it since. Too many memories. For her the cheap wooden paneling is Robb as a boy, and the pile of ironed sweaters and folded jeans on the desk is Robb as a teen. And on his bedside table there’s that same picture that she’s got in her room, of Robb and her fooling around in the forest. Robb as she last saw him: bearded and grinning, too happy for his own good.

She sits at the edge of the bed, gritting her teeth when the movement reignites the pain in her stomach.

“You’re gonna have to talk to me,” she says.

“You don’t want to hear what I’ve gotta say,” Theon replies.

“I can make sure you’re buried together when I kill you,” she says, her voice flat. “If that makes it easier. God knows I’m not in the mood to grant you any favors, though.”

She twists a little to look at him. Or at the waste of him, because he’s a shadow of his former self, or maybe the skeleton without the flesh and blood and muscle of the Theon she knew. His narrow jeans float over his legs and his shoulder blades stick out like broken wings. And she notices things she hadn’t seen before, red and black marks at the back of his neck, faintly visible through his hair. Small and circular like cigarette burns, longer and thinner like nail scratches.

“Talk,” she says.

“I wasn’t there. But Ramsay likes to brag. I think he told me the truth, or enough of it... The worst of it.”

Sansa tries to keep her eyes on the picture of her and Robb, taped to his bedside lamp above an ashtray. Robb didn’t smoke, not that she knew of, but Jon did and Theon did. There’s enough of them both in this room that it’d explain the ashtray. The three of them would hang out on the porch and later Catelyn would call for Robb and he’d show up with a smile, “Sorry, Ma,” and pick up the ten or so beer bottles they’d left lying around where “the kids could have stepped on them, Robb, you’ve gotta think about these things…”

With a sigh, Sansa slumps against Theon’s back. She lets her gaze drift towards the ceiling and the white fan with its twisted cord that hasn’t worked in years. No memories up there – a safer place for the eye to land.

“Tell me.”

“They stopped him on his way to see the girl. I can’t even remember her name. He talked about her a lot.”

“Jeyne.”

“Yeah. They stopped him on his way to Jeyne’s. Catelyn… Your mother was with your uncle too. They were going to meet the girl’s mother. Wedding arrangements.”

“Who stopped him?”

“The Freys. A bunch of ‘em. And the Boltons. They had him sign that bogus will, said or else they’d kill your Ma. They let your uncle go. Then they shot Robb. Through the chest, first. Then through the head. Range it was at, he was probably dead before he hit the floor.”

Sansa swallows, twisting the sleeves of Jon’s shirt in her hands. It would be easy, so easy to stop here. To tell him to shut up. To stick to that one horrible image, without asking about her mother.

“And?”

It’s the best she can do, this one haunted whisper. But he’ll hear it and he’ll feel it, in the way her back has gone rigid against his.

“I don’t think they expected Cat to be there. They’d probably have ended up killing her anyways. But she stabbed one of them, some Frey cousin, I don’t know… After they killed Robb, she lost it. They slit her throat. Threw her and the dead guy in one of the mining shafts… They buried Robb and the dog in the forest. In the same pit. I know where. He showed me.”

He’s careful not to move. It might even be that he’s holding his breath.

Above him, Sansa is quietly falling apart.

“Can you show me where?”

It takes him some time to speak, as if he were dragging the answer from deep inside him, forcing it up through his throat and finally, finally, letting it fall from his lips.

“Yeah.”

“If you repeat to Stannis what you told me, when he sees that Robb’s been murdered, we can have the will cancelled, we…”

“No.”

She closes her good eye and takes a steadying breath. “Theon, if you don’t help me I swear, I swear I’ll hurt you. Where were you that day? Cooking? Getting your fix? Did you know what they were gonna do? I bet you did. He was your best friend. And you won’t… You… I’ll find ways. I won’t let you forget. I’ll whisper his name in your ear every day until you die from it.”

She turns her head and with her cheek pressed against his filthy sweater, she whispers, “Robb. Your friend Robb. My mother Cat, who said you were a handsome devil that couldn’t be trusted. Even the dog. Even the dog loved you, you held him, remember? When you and Robb and Jon gone found that litter in the woods and you brought them back, you had your arms full of puppies, you fucking…”

“Stop.” He’s shaking, great shudders that rattle them both. She can hear the snapping of his teeth.

“It’s no… There’s no use, okay? You’ll be fucked if you do. You can’t do it.”

“Can’t do what?”

“You can’t go to Stannis. Do you really think he’s gonna listen to me? He fucking hates me. And you think it didn’t cross their minds? They want the body where it can be found. They could just have thrown him in the mines like they did your Ma. Ramsay said, you’ll have to marry him or lose the woods. If you refuse him, they’ll dig him up. Prove that he’s dead. Then they can use the will.”

“Not if I can prove they killed him,” Sansa insists. “You said they shot him! That’s no natural cause.”

“Why do you think they buried him in your woods? They used Jon’s gun.”

Sansa’s breath catches in her throat. “They what?”

“That shotgun he keeps in his car. Ramsay was so fucking proud of that trick. Says you made things easier for them. Back when they did it, it would have looked like Jon got into a fight with Robb over the woods. Now, it’ll be like you planned it, the two of you. Getting rid of Robb so you could be together.”

Sansa sits up slowly, her hands fisted in the bedspread. As her gaze falls on the open door, she sees Jon standing on the threshold.

There's little blood left in his face, little life left in his hollow eyes. If she didn't know better, she'd think it was him that they’d shot and killed.


	9. Soil or Silt

The front door slams shut.

_Dad._

Ned would often go hunting before dawn, and he'd come back in time to see them off to school, still smelling like the forest.

Except it isn't the morning but mid-afternoon, judging from the light. She's not in her own bed but her parents', and Ned's been dead for years.

Sansa manages to rise, taking it slow, with her hand curved protectively around her stomach as if this will somehow keep the pain at bay.

First she tiptoes down the corridor. Once she’s made sure that Theon is still here, sprawled across Robb’s bed and frowning in his sleep, she moves back towards the living room, following the distant murmur of voices. She makes out two speakers. One is Margaery, her voice ever patient and insinuating. The other is Jon.

"I don't answer to you."

"Sansa has to be the only person who doesn't know," Margaery says. "Except Davos, I guess. But it sounds like him to be willfully blind. Sansa's usually all over that kind of gossip. I've no idea how it got past her."

"Maybe because she's had other things to think about?"

"And you think it's wise to have her worry about that as well?"

"It's over. It's been over for months. I was alone. It was stupid. It happens."

"So you say, but I just saw you creep out of her house..."

"I was getting the fucking painkillers!"

Sansa takes an instinctive step back at his sudden rise in tone. Though she can't see them anymore, she hears him throw down the bottles of pills on the coffee table.

"Did you put a stop to it after Sansa came back? Damn, it's all about the red hair with you, isn't it? This being said, I’m pretty sure Mel dyes hers. My money’s on her being a brunette."

Jon's angry footsteps move to the kitchen, where Sansa hears him pour himself a glass of water. "I'm just being a good friend," Margaery says.

Sansa knows her tone, though. She's treating this as a game – she used to be like that in high school as well. Warm and supportive, but with something of a mean streak that allowed her to enjoy the havoc she caused. Sansa used to pride herself for never having gotten on her bad side, despite the Joffrey situation.

"Does she know about you and Robb?" Jon retaliates. "Has to be at least half the reason why you're getting involved in this.”

“That has nothing to do with anything,” Margaery says. To Jon, she probably comes across as dismissive, though Sansa isn’t fooled. Margaery’s always been very good at putting up a good front; at pretending that she didn’t give a damn about what affected her the most. “It was over a while before he went missing. Don’t you go tell her about that.”

“Do I look like the kind of person tells things to people?” Jon scoffs.

Sansa edges along the wall until she’s right outside the living room, looking in. Margaery is sitting with one leg folded and the other dangling from the couch, her bare foot brushing the carpet. She’s done her toenails a bright blue, the same teal color as her cardigan.

Robb and Margaery. It makes no sense – Margaery is too polished, too careful.

_I know_ , Margaery’s grey-blue eyes seem to say, as they meet Sansa’s. Her mouth curves into the mischievous smile that Sansa knows so well.

Jon is still in the kitchen. Through the long pane of glass by the front door, Sansa can see Rickon and the dogs, running around in the courtyard.

“You care about Sansa, though, right?” Margaery says, shifting her focus back to the kitchen. “I hope that’s not about being alone and stupid.”

“I don’t owe you an answer,” Jon says.

“You’ll have to answer if you want me to quit pestering you,” Margaery says, her leg swaying back and forth. She’s careful not to look in Sansa’s direction. “I’m very good at pestering people, you know that.”

“It ain’t looking out for her if you’re just being curious.”

“I need to know if this thing is just you taking advantage. Helping her and fucking her on the side, because she happens to look like your dead girlfriend.”

“She doesn’t look anything like Ygritte. Sansa’s Sansa.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“If she had any sense, she’d be looking to scram,” Jon mutters. “As soon as this all blows over. Run back to the city.”

“She can make up her mind about that in her own time.”

“I gave her an out. I said I’d take in the boys if she wanted to leave. That offer’s still on the table, if you want to bring it to her.”

“Bring it to her yourself. See how that goes down.”

Still Margaery doesn’t alert Jon to Sansa’s presence, even as Sansa crosses the room towards the kitchen, her steps muffled by the carpet.

Jon is standing in front of the sink, bracing himself against the counter. When Sansa winds her arms around him he stiffens, until he looks down and recognizes her bloodstained sleeves. Then the tension drains right out of him. His hand settles over hers and his thumb begins to rub an absent pattern on the inside of her wrist.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Ghost,” he says.

“You’re an idiot if you think I’m going anywhere,” Sansa mumbles into his collar. It wasn’t exactly the brightest of moves, pressing her aching ribs against his back, but she’s not about to let go. The worn blue-green shirt is soft against her cheek and the smell of him is already too familiar, coffee and cigarettes and a hint of the mossy woodlands.

Jon turns around, just enough to wrap an arm around her and pull her against his chest. He kisses the top of her head.

“Maybe we both are,” he says.

 

 

 

 

"You have to do it at night, and you can't do it in the forest," Margaery says. "That would just be moving the problem around. It's the first place they'll look."

Jon rubs his face with both hands. He looks exhausted, which is not a novel look on him, but it's distressing all the same. Sansa wishes she could drag him back to her parents' room and force him to take a nap.

"I might know a couple places," he says. "But someone would see us along the way. They might try to follow."

"Can you deal with them if they do?" Margaery asks.

"It's already difficult to deal with one body, let's not make it ten."

"I didn't mean _kill_ them," Margaery says, wide-eyed. "The thoughts you put in my head. I meant losing them! So they won't follow you to wherever it is you're going. What about you, Sansa? Any ideas?"

"About burial places? No."

She's lying down on the couch, with a wet towel over her bruised eye and her feet in Jon's lap. It makes it somewhat difficult to stay awake.

"What about the mines?" she ventures. _He'd be with mum._ "They'd never find him."

"Could work," Margaery shrugs.

"No,” Jon says. “They could stop us ten times along the way, and now that we have Theon, you can be sure they'll be watching everything we do. The mines is where they'll expect us to go. They might even tip off the sheriff."

"Where then?" Margaery says. She comes over to kneel beside the couch, soft fingers stroking Sansa's forehead. "Because it has to be done. You leave him here and it's only a question of time before they dig him up. And then Jon takes the fall and you, my darling, are fucked."

"I know a place."

No one has heard him come in. He didn't use to be so unobtrusive. There was a time when, if he entered a room, he'd be the one your eyes followed. Again Sansa remembers her mother, sitting her down at the kitchen table and telling her, _Not this boy. Handsome devil, lying shark. He can't be trusted. Stop scribbling his name in your notebooks, stop begging for his careless smiles._

"I know a place," Theon repeats.

"I suggest you stop talking," Jon says. "Better, I'd advise you to get out of my face until tonight, when we don't have a choice and we have to take you along, even if we don’t want to."

Theon wavers.

“Where?” Sansa asks, sitting up.

“The wetlands. In the valley over. I know a place. A Greyjoy place.”

“Anyone else knows about it?”

“No,” Jon warns, but she ignores him.

“Anyone else?” she asks again.

“My sister and me.” Theon takes a hesitant step inside the room. “We went there once with some rope and I let myself sink. I must’ve gone down ten feet before she pulled me out.”

Sansa stares at him. Oh, she’s played strange games – with Robb, with Arya, with Jon even, back when they were still children and the forest was their backyard. But there’s something disturbing about Theon’s story. Maybe it’s the way he told it, his voice monotonous, so far removed from the old Theon’s thirst for life. Or maybe it’s that she has no trouble imagining it, no matter how sinister it may be. Asha standing braced against a tree stump, bleeding hands wrapped around a length of muddy rope as she pulls her brother out of a slough he’d willingly jumped into.

_What if she hadn’t pulled you out?_ she wants to ask.

“Sansa,” Jon says, in a soft voice. “We can’t. That’s Greyjoy territory. And even if he’s telling the truth and we put him somewhere the fishermen won’t find... We can’t trust him. We drop him off, he’ll go fetch the Boltons. Give them the location against a pinch of crank.”

These are valid arguments, and yet they’re not what has her hesitating.

It’s the waters, the grey-brown waters. She hates the idea of Robb’s body slowly rotting away under a canopy of green, long ribbons of eelgrass swaying above and with the snakes sliding past.

“If that’s what you think,” Theon says, “you leave me there with him. You let me drown. I’ll let you do it.”

Sansa pulls herself together at that. She stops seeing the wetlands in Theon’s haunted gaze and instead she sees her brother’s best friend; the handsome waste of him.

“I’d rather the wetlands than the mines,” she says.

“His girl’s back at the mines,” Margaery points out, from where she’s still kneeling at Sansa’s feet. “What’s her name again?”

“Jeyne.”

“Yeah. He was mighty serious about her, wasn’t he? It’d make some amount of sense to bury him down there.”

“I don’t know Jeyne,” Sansa says, staring straight at Theon so that there’ll be no doubt about her true meaning. _I know you. I’d entrust my brother’s body to you and your murky waters._

 

 

 

Once upon a time, she remembers, Theon had shot a feral hog to protect Bran.

They’d taken him to the woods to teach him to shoot squirrels – Robb and Theon had, with Robb carrying Bran on his back like he weighed little more than a sack of grain. That must have been some time after Bran’s accident.

They took Ned’s rifle. Sansa only knows what she’s been told of the story. How the boys stepped away for a minute because Robb found a trail to follow, a quail or a pheasant maybe. How the piglet wandered into the clearing where they’d left Bran – or was it several of them? How it let out an ear-splitting screech and Theon and Robb raced back to the clearing, getting there in time with the hog. How Theon shot it three times – once in the leg, making it stumble, and then twice in the head. The final time he stood over it and finished it off with a point-blank shot.

This story had done much to commend Theon to Sansa at the time, despite the fact that Robb never tried to sugarcoat the incident. _The hog was right behind Bran and he took the lowest possible shot. It was his goddamn luck that he didn’t kill my brother instead of the beast._

Now she looks back upon the story and sees bravery alongside the recklessness. Good intentions, if a little misplaced.

“Better do this now,” Jon says. “In case they decide to swing by the woods while we’re away. Sansa, you’ll get me whatever shovels you’ve got lying around. Can someone drive you to work, if you’re hell-bent on going? Mel, maybe?”

Sansa turns towards him, slightly taken aback. She didn’t expect such an abrupt change of tune. Jon isn’t looking at her, however. He’s frowning at Theon and Theon’s holding his gaze, a dark stare on both sides, with something passing between them that she’s not privy to.

“I’m not... I’m not going to work,” she says, her voice sounding weak to her own ears.

“And yet, you were so insistent about it,” Jon notes, deceptively gentle.

“When you said you’d have me sit at the mill doing nothing! Of course I’m coming along if you’re... If you’re going to...”

“Alright.” His hand settles on her ankle. He gives it a conciliatory rub. “Alright. Shovels then. Marg, can you keep an eye on Rickon this afternoon, maybe stay with him at Mel’s?”

_Marg?_

Sansa doesn’t have time to question any of it. Margaery rises on her knees to kiss her cheek, and then she’s up and the front door’s banging shut. Sansa hears her calling for Rickon, out in the front yard.

“Get guns as well,” Theon says, as Jon carefully takes a hold of Sansa’s feet, freeing his legs.

“Do you need me to pack your lunch, too?”

“You know what I meant,” Theon says with an exasperated sigh, hand coming up to push against his ashen brow, as if he were trying to keep something in, or to keep it from spilling out.

“I never know what you mean, Greyjoy. Probably because what you actually think’s always buried under three layers of lies. Try the lean-to for shovels.”

Jon knows where they keep the rifles. He’s a good shot, or so she’s heard. He doesn’t hunt often, and before she’d left, he didn’t use to keep a shotgun under the front seat of his truck.

“Sansa.”

Jon crouches before her, with his hand on her knee. She reaches down to trace the pale blue arrows below his thumb.

“Maybe later you can tell me what that stands for.”

“Ygritte,” he says, without missing a beat.

Sansa looks up at him, and he must read the indecision on her face because his mouth twitches.

“What, you’d mark me too?”

He follows her gaze towards his other hand, lifts it for inspection.

“I’m guessing a bird?” he says, with that same brief quirk of the lips.

One might almost think that he finds the situation amusing. Sansa isn’t quite fooled. It’s more likely that he’s trying to downplay his offer by making light of it. She’s careful not to say a word.

“When this is over,” he says at last as he rises, letting go of her knees. “Yellow head, black wings.”

Sansa tries to contain her smile, just like he did. Maybe she’s too young for that still. Maybe, despite everything that’s happened, there remains in her some innocent shoot that neither the Freys nor the Boltons nor the bleak winter landscape have been able to uproot.

Jon leans down to kiss her, his hand lingering at the back of her head.

“You put that smile somewhere,” he says. “Keep it safe for me. I’ll be needing it.”


	10. Decay

Blankets and shovels have been thrown in the back of the truck. The three of them are piled up in front. They could hardly look any more suspicious, particularly Sansa, with her black eye and bruises. She has to share a seat with Theon but she won’t complain. It’s not like he takes up much room, and besides, they’re not driving far.

Theon has them stop two or three miles away from the house. Jon drives back a little, so that he can park the truck under the trees, on a trail that's not quite a path.

He comes round the truck to help Sansa down, letting her hold on to his arm as he tries not to touch her bruised side.

"Be careful where you put your feet."

She gives him a surprised look.

“I know."

Ghost climbs out of the back of the truck and disappears under the trees. Jon goes to fetch the shovels.

Sansa stands on the deserted stretch of road, breathing in the cold and something else, the smell of the undergrowth.

Maybe she's walked over the place already, without knowing it was here. On her way to Jon's. On her way back, that day they fought in his kitchen. Her feet stomping on the dark brown earth of Robb's grave, burying him deeper. Could he feel it? Could he tell her step from the deer and the dogs and the hunter's careful tread?

"The needle tears a hole..."

"What?"

She turns sharply to where Theon is standing like a grim scarecrow, head hanging low, but it soon becomes obvious that he wasn't talking to her. He's muttering the words to a song, much like he might have a prayer. Perhaps it steadies him, but in this particular time and place, it has quite the opposite effect on her.

" _Try to kill it all away, but I remember everything..._ ”

"Stop," she snaps.

Behind them, Jon immediately stops in the middle of whatever rummaging he'd been doing, and Sansa sees him eye Theon with suspicion and no small amount of distaste.

"Come," she decides.

Snatching Theon's sleeve, she pulls him towards the ditch.

This, at last, seems to pull him from his torpor, for he holds her back with a hand to her shoulder and a low-voiced, "Wait."

He jumps down into the ditch. Despite the snow and the ice and the five-foot drop, the move is effortless and perfectly balanced, much like it would have been years ago. Turning back, he reaches out for her.

She lets him, because it's not about how much it might hurt – and it does, awakening dormant aches in her stomach and along her ribs – but about how she hopes his touch will rekindle something, for the both of them, much like when she’d joined him on Robb’s bed.

Theon sets her down carefully, hands lingering a moment over her hips. He takes a rattling breath.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I should’ve...”

Jon shoves past him, throwing a shovel at his feet, effectively cutting him short. Theon picks up the shovel and follows wearily. Sansa hastens her steps to catch up, stumbling all the way to the trees before Jon seems to remember that she can’t quite match their long-legged strides.

He tosses Ned’s rifle to Theon, juggles the shotgun and shovel so he can carry them both under one arm, and doubles back to take her hand.

Theon glances back at them, but whatever is going through his head, he knows better than to share it.

“It’s close to that boulder,” he says. “The one where we used to... In the clearing with the Devil's apples."

Sansa knows the place. She knows it like the old school where Robb and her used to go, before it burnt down and Arya and the boys had to take the bus to the next town over. It's a place of her childhood, from when she’d try to creep up to the boulder without the boys noticing, because they wouldn't let her play with them.

It's where they'd found the dogs, and by the way Jon pulls on her hand, his grip a bit too tight, she can tell that he remembers too.

She wasn't in the forest with them that day, but she was there when they came out of it. Robb first, with two tiny balls of grey fur pawing at his sweater. Bran hobbling behind him, blinking in awestruck joy as Summer tried to lick his face. Then lanky Theon, with a puppy under each arm. And Jon last, who'd walked out of the forest with Ghost cradled in his arms and his head bowed as if he couldn't tear his eyes away.

Then Theon had walked up to where she sat on the porch and plopped a dog down on her lap, spraying mud all over her skirt.

"This one's a girl," he’d said.

How he'd laughed, when she decided to call her Lady. That summer he was around all the time. He'd sit beside her on the steps and she'd put the pup on his knee so he could feel her breathe and hear her soft little squeaks.

"Why there?" Jon asks.

They're close to the clearing now. She can feel it in the soles of her feet, unless it's exhaustion catching up with her. The forest ground seems to roll under her, and twice she slips on a patch of ice and Jon rights her, letting go of her hand to pull her up by the front of her jacket.

“Because I told him,” Theon mutters.

“Told him what?”

For a fleeting moment, Sansa thinks she’ll have to come between them, and she steps forward quickly, because this would be the worst possible time for Jon to lose his temper – when they still don’t know where Robb has been buried, when the Boltons must have guessed what they were up to and might decide to intervene, send the sheriff after them, maybe.

She expects Theon to say that he told Ramsay where to bury Robb. That he had a hand in her brother’s murder, maybe both.

“Told him that it’s where we went to smoke weed,” Theon says, the anger perceptible in his voice. “He found it so fucking funny. They’d have buried him in the woods anyways. He picked the spot to fuck with me. If you want to hang this on me, go ahead.”

“When this is over,” Jon mutters.

Sansa squeezes his hand and he looks back at her, surprised and then a little annoyed when he sees her shake her head.

“You don’t always know best,” he says, but she knows that tone. It’s the tone Bran or Rickon use when she forbids them to do something and they want to pretend that they haven’t lost the argument.

The clearing in winter is grey and soft with moss, as if the woods had turned to rot over Robb’s grave. The ground around the boulder however is covered in ice, and Jon gives it a critical look, moving forward to tap the blade of the shovel against the thick crust of ice.

“Here?” he asks Theon.

Theon nods.

Jon casts a derisive look at the other end of the clearing, where the ground is moss and mud and would have been much easier to dig into. Then he looks back at the ice, takes a deep breath and brings the shovel down hard.

The clearing echoes with the ringing of steel on ice, and yet despite Jon’s repeated blows, the ice doesn’t break.

From where she stands, Sansa can barely see a fine spider-web of cracks running across the surface.

“Okay, stop.”

Theon has to speak loudly to be heard above the banging, and the sound of his voice – callous and brimming with authority – has Jon freeze, reflexively maybe, with the shovel poised a few inches away from the ice.

Theon walks to the edge of the clearing and reaches into the snow-covered bushes, pulling a knife from the pocket of his jacket. He returns with a few dry branches.

“Give me your matches.”

“We don’t have time to start a fire.”

“We just need a crack,” Theon points out. “Then you stick the blade inside, lift chunks of it from below...” He catches the matches that Jon tosses his way. “... You don’t need to melt it completely, just enough to be able to break it open. Start digging around the edges, where the ice stops. If you can. I’d say it’s what, two, three inches? Maybe you can lift it.”

Jon obeys him as Theon goes to stand in the middle of the patch of ice.

Ghost lies down at Sansa’s side and after a moment’s hesitation she emulates him, sitting down on the carpet of moss and leaning sideways against his wet fur.

Before long her eyes begin to close. One of them wasn’t fully open to begin with, and it seems pointless to fight it, when they could be digging for hours and she’ll have to manage the walk back to the truck.

She sees a blur of movement on Jon's side, a flash of orange between Theon's hands. Then darkness, the distant sound of the shovel and Ghost's steady breathing.

Then nothing.

 

 

 

 

Ghost wakes her up, unless it's the silence. The dog is sitting up, and ahead of her in the clearing Jon and Theon are standing over...

"Robb," she says, scrambling to her feet.

They both turn towards her. Theon says, "Don't."

She's already there however, standing between them and looking down at the bag – garbage bag, they put her brother in a garbage bag – and she tries to associate the big black mass of plastic and twigs and soil with her brother. It would be difficult even if the bag had been smaller and less deformed, but as it is, she can't make sense of it.

"Why is it so big?" she asks, resentful of the thin quaver of sound that comes out of her mouth.

"Grey Wind," Theon says. "It's going to be fucking heavy, even with the both of us." He looks at Jon. "Do you think we should..."

"We're not opening it," Jon says. "Fucking hell. We're not."

Sansa's never heard him sound so upset. He's pulled out a cigarette, but he's far too busy crushing it between his fingers to think of lighting it.

"If you think you can take on half the weight," Theon says. "But if we took out the dog..."

"Yeah?" Jon snaps. "You want to try sorting out one decomposed body from the other? I'm ready to trust you that it's Robb. Until we get to the wetlands at least. Right now we have to... We have to take him back to the truck. Start filling in the hole. The longer we keep him in the open... the smell'll drive us crazy."

Sansa crouches by the bodies as they fill in the grave, not quite daring to touch the plastic covering. _This isn't Robb,_ she tells herself, though she knows things would have been very different if Jon had accepted to cut into the garbage bag.

They'd have had trouble pulling her away from the body then, no matter what state it was in. Looking up, she catches Jon wiping his cheek with the back of a hand.

Once they're done, they take a minute to catch their breath. Sansa gives the newly-filled grave a dubious look. The mound of earth stands out against the surrounding ice and moss and snow. The moment someone steps into the clearing, be they a Bolton or someone else, they'll know someone has been digging. All they can hope for is another cold night, or a sudden snowfall.

The look she gives the men is just as skeptical. They’re both in bad shape, Theon more so than Jon, perhaps, judging from the way he's hunched over his shovel, head hanging between his shoulders as he tries to catch his breath. But Jon isn't doing much better, his skin paler than the surrounding ice. The truck is reasonably close, and yet she fails to see how they’ll make it this far.

“Alright,” Jon says. “The faster we leave... Sansa, can you carry the shovels? Otherwise I’ll go and...”

“I can,” she assures him, and goes to pull Theon’s from under him, though as soon as she’s got both in her arms she starts wondering what she just agreed to. The nap did her good, and she’s nowhere near as dizzy as the day before, but that doesn’t mean that she’s feeling well enough to lift two heavy shovels.

“I won’t have my hands free,” Jon tells her. “If Ghost starts barking, you throw yourself down...”

“But Ghost doesn’t bark.”

“Yeah. So if he does, you’ll know something’s wrong. Okay, on three...”

She doesn’t wait to see them struggle with the body – the _bodies._ Instead she follows Ghost as he heads back towards the road.

She finds it difficult to stay focused. Melisandre's boxes of pills jostle together in her pocket, but she won't pull them out, not just yet. They make her woozy and she can't afford to be woozy until all of this is done and over with.

If only they could get to the wetlands and back without any trouble. If only...

Ghost barks, just the once. Sansa feels a shiver course down her spine. The harsh, guttural sound turns into a menacing growl.

"Down," Jon says, another angry bark, and as he walks past he seizes her by the collar and pushes her to the ground. She barely has time to drop the shovels before she goes down.

Jon disappears between the trees.

Theon comes to stand over her. Lying on the ground and with her bad eye, she mostly sees his muddy boots and jeans, and a glimpse of her father's rifle. From the way he's holding it and from the way he's standing, feet firmly planted on the ground, she can tell that he's ready to shoot. Chances are high that he wouldn't miss.

They don't hear a sound from the direction Jon went into. With visions of his dead body creeping upon her in the lapse between every heartbeat, Sansa tries to keep her breathing under to control.

If he doesn't come back – if someone else comes – what should they do? What use would she be in a fight, tired and bruised as she is?

Theon's foot shifts slightly and she looks up towards the rocks and trees ahead. A white silhouette is gliding between them, followed at a short distance by a taller figure in a red plaid jacket. Sansa lets out a jerky sigh.

"What was it?" Theon asks.

“Kids," Jon says.

Theon glances at Sansa – an old reflex, as if this dubious look had been meant for Robb and had settled on her by default. Sansa holds his gaze, frowns.

“Kids,” she repeats.

Jon holds out his hand and helps her get to her feet.

“Jon,” she tries again, refusing to let go of his hand.

He gives her an unreadable look. When she won’t back down, he leans his forehead against hers. Breathes out slowly and nuzzles her nose. In spite of herself, she gives a minute shake of the head, nuzzles him back.

Jon lets go of her hand to pick up the shovels. He deposits them into her outstretched arms. “Let’s go.”

Jon and Theon retrieve the heavy bag and they resume walking, Ghost once again leading the way. This time they make it to the truck without any further disturbances.

Sansa wonders what it was that Jon really saw. Kids? It seems unlikely, and then what. Wild animal, hunter? It’s likely that she’ll never know.

And maybe, in light of the circumstances, she can afford not to care.

 

 

 

 

Jon lets Theon drive. Sansa doesn't know why. It could be a sign of trust, motivated maybe by what he saw when he returned: Theon standing beside her with a loaded rifle, ready to shoot. Or it could be exhaustion, or pragmatism. Theon is the only one who knows where they're going, after all, and the faster they move, the better. They don't have much of a choice when it comes to trusting him.

If she keeps looking straight ahead, she can pretend that it's only Ghost at the back of the truck. If she keeps looking straight ahead, and if she doesn't strain to hear Ghost's tiny whimpers.

"He shouldn't have to ride back there," she whispers. She's all but sitting in Jon's lap – when she’d climbed in she'd seen Theon smile about it, though not long enough that Jon could see it.

"There ain't enough space for the three of us," Jon says. "We can't fit the dog as well."

"I'm just saying," Sansa whispers, stubborn. "He shouldn't have to ride with his dead brother..."

"We're all riding with our dead brother," Jon says. "Or whatever he was to you," he adds, with a look in Theon's direction.

There's been much in the way of silent communication between them since this morning, and perhaps it's best not to ask. There are things she'd have been better off not knowing – like much of what she'd overheard of Jon and Margaery's conversation. That there was some short-lived thing between Margaery and Robb, she might be able to accept.

Jon and Mel, now, that's another matter.

Her eyes drift towards the rear-view mirror and she remembers what they're currently doing, that Robb's dead body is in the back of the truck and that there's still many miles to go before they might consider themselves, if not safe, at least safer than they were when they left the house.

Outside the window, the austere landscape of grey-green forests on the foothills of desolate mountains has given way to the wetlands, grey-green marshes and sinking forests, and the occasional glimpse of a blue heron standing tall among the yellow reeds.

She glances towards Theon, sees the way he's clenching the wheel, staring unblinking at the road ahead. It could have been a while since he last came here.

People say the ground is never still in the wetlands, and that the Greyjoys are like their marshes, ever in motion and ever changeable. There's the drug-runners who spend their time on the roads, and the fishermen with their rusted, worm-eaten boats. Around here, the fishing Greyjoys are called fishermen.

The smuggling Greyjoys are called fishermen, too.

"What makes you think we won't come across any of your kin?" Jon asks.

He's got one arm around Sansa. The other is holding the shotgun balanced upon her leg.

"Oh, we might," Theon says. He smirks. "But you'll shoot them down, won't you?"

Jon's hand tightens upon the gun and Sansa reaches down carefully to take his fingers, tugging until he lets go.

"I'm glad you're back among us," she says. "It'd be good if you could bring back the Theon who gets what he wants, not the one who can't hold things without breaking them."

Theon laughs. The further they drive from the forest and the Boltons and the too-close shadow of the mountains, the more he begins to look like his old self. He's cranked down the window so the wind can whip his dark hair and his hands have relaxed upon the wheel.

She's always liked Theon's hands. The long fingers, the sharpness of the bony joints. She remembers how they'd looked stroking Lady's pale coat. Holding a cigarette as he leaned across the railing of the front porch. Cuffing the back of Robb's head. _Stark, you dumb..._

The insult redacted from her memory, like much of the cruel things Theon has done over the years. Would that it had only been puppies and milkshakes. There'd been the time she waited outside a farm for two hours, idly kicking a rusted beer can as Lady ran up and down the road. Why had they gone there? Some girl. There was always some girl.

When it came to Theon, it had always been these two constants: the girls, Robb. Maybe not in that order.

She lets her eyes slide from Theon's hands to his face, and she remembers other things. The dull thud of a window sliding shut against a wooden frame, causing her to jerk awake for the briefest moment before she fell back asleep, much like she might have woken up her brothers as she sneaked out of the house to meet Jon. Full ashtrays and Robb axing trees like they'd done him offence, eyes ringed blue by a lack of sleep. Jon and Theon’s brief stint at the mines, Robb driving out there to meet them. Robb sitting on the porch with Theon’s head in his lap, Theon’s face still black with coal. The long column of ash of Theon’s cigarette as it burnt itself out between his fingers, and where had Robb’s hands been? In Theon’s hair, or wiping the coal dust from his cheeks?

Theon cuffing the back of Robb's head and Robb tripping him in return, a split second where Theon reeled him in by the front of his shirt, the laughter dying in both their throats, stuttering to a painful stop and to a heavy silence.

Robb meeting Jeyne and Theon moving to the Boltons'.

There was always some girl, it's true. It's also true that Theon is a consummate liar, as Jon had rightly pointed out, and that you could ask each and every one of these girls and never get a real picture of what kind of a man he is.

And it's too late to ask Robb. But there's a part of her that wonders, having met Ramsay, how much of this whole mess is the Boltons wanting her woods, and how much of it is Ramsay getting back at Robb for reasons no one has seen fit to tell her about. Tearing Robb to shreds, to death and beyond, him and his dog and his family and his friends.

"Stop looking at me," Theon says. Upon the wheel his hands have gone tense again, she can see them twitching.

"You can ask him," Jon speaks up, surprising her. "Whatever you want to know about your brother, you can ask him."

Sansa shakes her head. Too much thinking won't help her at this point, and any further rehashing of old memories is likely to be a dangerous distraction. Maybe she can ask Theon later. Maybe she can ask Margaery. It sounds like her brother had a whole life that she didn’t know about, or didn’t care to see.

"Just tell us if it's far," she says.

"No," Theon says, hands relaxing a fraction. "I'll go right after the broken tree over there. Then we walk."

 

 

 

 

Ghost tries to follow them at first and three times Jon has to walk him back to the truck and order him to _Stay here, boy. Don't move. Don't follow us. You wait._

The fourth time, he turns towards her in exasperation and calls, "Tell him you're okay, yeah? He won't hear it from me, apparently."

Sansa comes to crouch beside Ghost, and putting her arms around his neck she whispers reassurances in his ear, trying to sound like she believes it, adding little loving words to distract him further.

When she walks back across the road, he stays put, red eyes fixated on them, unblinking.

"Impressive," Jon says drily. "Don't you go thinking I haven't noticed how it works on me as well as the dog."

Sansa comes to join him where he's smoking by the side of the road. The body is hidden behind the first cluster of trees, with Theon standing guard beside it.

She stands on tiptoe, cups her hand around Jon's ear.

"I love you, you brave thing," she whispers. The same words that she used on Ghost, spoken in the same voice, warm and mellifluous. "I'll be fine, don't risk yourself for me. Keep those teeth sharp and that white fur clean. My darling wolf, my beautiful boy."

Jon snatches her wrist and squeezes, as if that would cut off the flow of words.

"Don't," he says. "Not now. Heaven's sake, girl. Don't make me want to..."

"I could use your arms, Snow," Theon calls, with faint mockery, from behind the trees.

And it rushes back in again – the presence of Robb's decaying corpse in a dirt-stained bag, Theon and his guilt as muddled and bottomless as the swamps, and the threat of the Boltons...

"What did they say, when you took Theon?" she asks, struggling to match Jon's long strides as he goes to join Theon behind the trees. "Why haven't they sent anyone?"

"Roose Bolton," Jon says. "He stepped in. Said he wanted no quarrel with me. That they'd leave you alone. He apologized for Ramsay's conduct."

"And you believed him?"

Jon throws the end of his cigarette into the nearest puddle.

"No. But I don't think he'll make a move just yet, either."

"They're not afraid of you," Sansa says quickly. "Ramsay... Ramsay's dangerous and I don't think he's afraid of anything."

"I know," Jon says. He casts a cautious look in Theon's direction. "I told Bolton I was on good terms with the sheriff, and it's the truth. But I didn't know they were trying to frame me. Let's get going."

Theon guides them away from the road and under the trees, moving from one clump of grass to the next. It's a slow progress among the wintry landscape of cracked grey bark and solitary reeds. Every so often Theon takes a step back, calls out for Jon to stop.

"Slough," he warns, or, "not stable enough," or just, "fuck."

Jon hasn't said anything about the need to drop down should someone arrive. He's given Sansa the shotgun, but she's not sure he expects her to use it should trouble arise.

The truth is they've stepped into Theon's lands now, and they don't have much choice but to trust his sense of direction, and his promise that no one knows the slough that he's taking them to.

"There'll be a small boat ahead," Theon says, breathing hard because of the bag bearing down on his shoulder and how it forces him to tear his feet from the collapsible ground. "Motor ain't working but we just need to push off from the edge, so he won't catch on the reeds."

They find the boat, covered in moss and with a corrugated ruin where the motor ought to be. Jon turns back towards Sansa, a mute question.

"I'm coming," Sansa says, voice quavering.

Jon holds her gaze a moment longer. She can't tell if he's trying to make her change her mind, or if he wants to communicate how sorry he is that she should have to endure all this.

"I'll do it," Theon tells him. "Wait a second," he calls back to Sansa. "We'll set him down first."

They arrange their charge in the boat. Jon picks up the broken paddle.

And as Sansa steps onto the ledge, pulling her foot out of several inches of muck, Theon shoves her back, not very hard, with just enough strength that she'll topple among the grass and reeds as Jon pushes the boat away from the bank.

"It's not Robb," Theon throws back at her, low and fierce. "What's in there, it's not your brother anymore. You're already scarred enough."

"Jon!"

But Jon won't even turn back. And there'll be no wading into the water, not in the state she's in.

So she has to stay put and watch, staring out at the boat where it's stopped some twenty feet away, coming to rest against big clusters of eelgrass. She sees Theon produce a hunting knife and the two men crouch low as they slit the bag open.

She sees Jon's brusque recoil, back hitting the side of the boat. It causes it to rock from side to side and by the time the swaying has stopped, Jon has stepped forward again.

Theon and him topple the bag overboard, and she never does see what was inside. It hits the dense waters with a thud rather than a splash. It takes its sweet time sinking.

She has time to sing a verse and then two.

_"We sang the songs of childhood, hymns of faith that made us strong..."_

 

 

 

When Jon and Theon step back onto the bank, she slaps Jon, hard, across the face. She shoves Theon backwards, towards the slough, and it's Jon who catches him before he can fall, with a tight grip on his belt.

Then she tosses the shotgun at Jon. She waits for Theon to lead the way.

None of them says a word, all the way out of these watery woods. Sometimes Jon turns back to check that she's still walking behind him, and she sees the red imprint of her hand on his cheek.

 

 

 

 

Theon's the first to notice that they have company. He hastens his steps towards the truck, Jon close behind him, and Sansa looks up and sees the car with its smashed window. A slender silhouette in a dark red windbreaker is waiting by the open door.

Sansa immediately casts about for Ghost, but she finds him sitting at some distance from the truck, looking alert but not in any way threatening or threatened.

“Greyjoy,” Jon says by way of greeting.

“Stark,” says Theon’s sister.

Sansa sees Jon’s back straighten as if he’d just been kicked in the back.

“What?” Asha drawls. “Ain’t it that simple? When you’re raised with wolves and you hunt with wolves and you fuck the fierce little she-wolves, don’t you become a wolf?”

“So many cuckoos beg to differ,” Theon says, pulling out a cigarette from what Sansa’s reasonably sure is Jon’s pack.

Asha turns to Theon.

“I thought they’d kill you”, she says. “I came here ready to bury you, or to drag you out of a pond and bury you again... Theon, you look awful.”

For the first time since she’s started speaking, she lets the irreverent mask drop. In that final statement Sansa hears concern, maybe even fear. Asha raises a hand; on second thought, she uses it to push back a handful of chin-length black hair.

“I’ll take you home, okay?”

“Greyjoy,” Jon says.

He must have meant Asha, but Theon and her turn around at the same time. Lean and tall, the both of them, with their dark eyes and their mocking mouths.

“You go back there...”, Jon begins.

“I don’t know where ‘there’ is,” Asha says. “I don’t give a fuck. I get my brother, you get your underwater graveyard, there’s nothing more needs to be said, right? Not between us. Not to anyone else.”

“No,” Jon agrees.

“Fine, then. Good day to you. Stark, other Stark.”

As he’s about to climb into the car, Theon exchanges a look with Sansa. Following an impulse, she lays a hand on his arm.

“He wants you,” Theon says. “It was a plan to him before, it’s a game now, because he’s met you and he likes that you’re putting up a fight. Don’t let him touch you. Don’t ever let him touch you.”

Sansa steps back, startled.

“I won’t,” she says.

“Theon!” Asha calls from inside the car. The engine hums.

“It’s two different things,” Theon insists. “Don’t just think about the woods and the house.” Briefly he touches her cheek, the side of her face that isn’t bruised. “Look after yourself, Birdie, okay?”

Sansa doesn’t know what to say to that, so she just nods. Nods and leans into it, maybe, just a little.

Then he ducks into the car, and the car pulls onto the road.

Suddenly it’s only her and Jon, and Ghost, and the strange stillness of the wetlands.


	11. Devil's Resting Place

On the ride home she sleeps in fits and starts, eyes blinking open at times to see snatches of landscape, dusk falling on the mountains and the road stretching ahead of them, mercifully empty.

Whenever Jon sees that she's awake, he gives her a quick, crooked smile. And as she goes back to sleep, that's what she dreams of.

Mountains, the empty stretch of road lit yellow by the headlights, and Jon turning towards her with that awkward smile.

 

 

 

 

He stops the truck on the road instead of parking in front of the house. The meaning is clear: he doesn't intend to stay. Sansa gives him a wounded look.

"Do you mind waiting here?"

She just blinks at him, tired and a little lost.

"I'll check on the boys," Jon says. "Ask Davos and Mel to watch them overnight. Then we can go home."

"Home?" Sansa repeats, with a look at the dark porch of the Stark house.

"Home," Jon says. "My house. I'm taking you back there tonight."

"You think they'll come here?" she asks, unable to keep the undercurrent of worry out of her voice. "Because if you do, we shouldn't leave the boys..."

"I don't know what they'll do. Wouldn’t do them no good to fuck with Davos and Mel, though. House should be safe."

"Why, then?"

Jon drums his fingers against his knees, glances out and then back at her.

"I've got my own bed and I'd like to sleep in it tonight, if that's okay with you."

Sansa nods, feeling the blush rise to her cheeks.

"Make sure they know Rickon has to shower? He keeps running everywhere, even on school days..."

She watches him walk up to the Seaworths’ house, remembering how she'd seen Mel standing on the porch, a few mornings ago.

 _There'll always be someone watching when you let your guard down,_ she thinks.

Mel opens the door and Jon and her exchange a few words on the porch. There's a whole language there that Sansa can partly decipher, even at a distance. Jon's standing with his foot on the lowest step, body angled backwards. Mel is leaning towards him, just a little, head tilted to the side as she listens to what he has to say. From her captivated expression, you'd think he's got her under a spell.

It's probably the reverse that's true. Jon kicks idly at the step and then, to Sansa's mild horror, he runs his hand through his hair, as if he was flustered.

A small bouncing shadow appears behind Melisandre and before she can do more than make an ineffectual grab for his arm, Rickon has run down the porch steps and taken off across the Seaworths’ yard.

Sansa opens her door in time for him to scramble inside. He plops himself down, panting, in the driver's seat.

"Are you going to leave us?" he asks.

"Leave you?" Sansa repeats, taken aback. "Of course not."

Rickon throws his arms around her. With a silent wince, Sansa reciprocates the embrace, kissing the top of his head.

"That's my boy," she whispers. "Of course I won't leave you. How would I get by if I didn't have mud on my floors and an excited puppy to look after?"

She gives him another kiss and he tilts his head back so she can plant a third one on his nose.

"What made you think that?"

"Marg said."

"Marg told you that?"

Rickon hesitates. He shakes his head no. Sansa sighs, smiles.

"Who was she talking to?"

"Cella."

"Okay."

"She said she knew you wanted to leave."

Sansa can almost hear Margaery's tone, gossipy and self-satisfied.

"She says when Uncle Petyr comes back, you'll go with him to the city."

"She won't."

Sansa jumps, turns her head - the one part of her that isn't immobilized by an armful of distressed child - and sees Jon standing by the door, looking up at them both with unreadable eyes.

"I won't," she agrees. "Now go take your shower, kid. And don't you even think about skipping class tomorrow."

"I'll make sure he makes it to the bathroom," Jon says, lifting Rickon off her lap and carrying him off under his arm like he would a log or a small dog.

Sansa watches them go, listening to Rickon's babble recede as they get closer to the house.

 _I won't,_ she tells herself, with the faintest stab of guilt because yes, the thought has crossed her mind.

But that was weeks ago, and there are times when she's not even sure she's the same person as she was back then.

The Sansa who left the mountains a year ago thought about boys. She wanted to get a nice car after a few years’ worth of work at the bar, and maybe one day she’d have moved to the city. To a place with a rooftop garden, like the one Loras had. That Sansa used to complain for hours when she was asked to look after her brothers. She fought with her sister about misplaced tennis shoes or the last slice of apple pie.

Where could Arya be, now? Sansa suspects she ran to the city, and if she’s entirely honest with herself, it’s just another reason why she won’t leave: the faint hope that eventually, once their fight has run its course, Arya will come back.

No, she won’t move to the city, not if it means leaving her siblings behind. She’s too accustomed to Bran and Rickon’s presence by now. Losing Robb has given her a glimpse of the damage their disappearance might cause.

She won’t move to the city, but maybe if this all blows over, she can yet get a car. And as for thinking about boys...

She watches Jon as he walks back towards the truck, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket and his head ducked against the wind.

A week ago, she was a girl with a house, half a forest, two boys and two dogs. And now she could add to the list... She could add enemies, and a third dog, and a dark, stubborn man.

“Home?” she asks, as he climbs in next to her.

“Home,” Jon agrees. And adds, between his teeth, “Goddamn Greyjoy stole my cigarettes.”

 

 

 

 

The sky is pitch black by the time Jon swerves onto the dirt road that leads to his house. It makes the light on the porch stand out.

Sansa straightens up, gripping the edges of her seat.

"Intruders don't announce themselves," Jon says. "Must be Dany."

Sansa doesn't find this reassuring in the least, but she keeps her mouth shut. She remembers Dany's accusatory tone all too well, the bones of steel behind her pretty little face.

The Targaryen girl is sitting on the porch, not in the deck chairs but right there on the steps. Despite the chilly weather, she's wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and a hoodie. Her pale legs seem to glow in the electric light.

Dany is keeping her thoughts carefully concealed behind a blank facade. It makes her looks like Ghost: like a creature that watches, but won't ever make a sound.

Jon jumps out and slams the door. Sansa quickly follows suit so he won't have to come round and help her, partly because she doesn't want to find out if he would.

Jon meets her in front of the truck. He grasps a handful of red hair and gives it a soft tug.

"Wait for me inside?"

Sansa nods.

She climbs up the stairs as Jon comes to sit beside Dany on the porch. Dany doesn't even look at her as she goes by. She doesn't answer Sansa's muttered greeting.

Sansa steps inside the kitchen. Ghost streaks past and she pushes the door, meaning to close it, but then she hears her name and she stops, her hand flat upon the warped door frame.

"Can't drive you back," Jon is saying. "D'you want me to call Jorah, get him to pick you up?"

"No, thanks," Dany says. "I'll walk."

"Don't look at me like that."

There's a silence, and then the scratch of a match being lit.

"You're choosing the Starks over me," Dany says.

There's no self-pity in her voice. It's the tone of a girl who won't bother to protect her face in a fight, but will take advantage of your extended fist to rake her nails down your arm. Sansa's met such girls - her sister first among them.

"No," Jon says. "They need me right now. If you needed me, I'd be there."

"So you're not going to screw her. That's not why you brought her here."

Another silence.

"That's a different thing," he says.

"What, you have your eye on her now?"

"I've had my eye on her for a while."

Sansa pushes the door slightly, just by an inch or so. It's no good though - all she can see is their backs. Dany has her arms around her legs and her chin propped on her knees. A thin wisp of smoke rises above Jon's head, contorting as she watches.

"I don't want to share you," Dany says. "I shouldn't have to share you."

Jon huffs. If it's laughter it isn't in any way happy. "I've been sharing you for years," he says. "Turnaround’s fucking fair in my opinion.”

"She's using you."

"I know."

"You can't go killing people for every girl you fall for."

"Yeah?" There's a dangerous edge to his laughter now. He reaches up to touch her cheek. "That's a bit rich coming from you, sweetheart."

Dany springs to her feet, slapping his hand away.

"Have it your way," she says. "I warned you. I warned you both."

Jon rises in turn, the cigarette glowing between his fingers.

"Don't you try and scare her off," he says.

Dany laughs. The harsh rhythm of it sounds familiar. It takes Sansa a few seconds to realize that it's because it’s the same laugh as Jon’s.

"I don't obey you."

"Can't I give you a damn coat, at least?" Jon asks. "Smokes won't keep you warm on a night like this."

Dany gives him another one of those stern and fairly contemptuous looks. Then she turns her back on him and heads off towards the forest.

Jon sighs. He takes his time finishing the cigarette, fingers tapping against his leg. It’s the only visible sign that the conversation has rattled him.

Sansa wouldn't dare go to him now, not for a good night's sleep or a brand new coat, not for the biggest tip she's ever made at the _Mountain Lion._

She retreats slowly inside the house and this time, she shuts the door.

The kitchen is familiar, with its big wooden table and its timber walls, its plywood cabinets and the ceramic mug that's been used as an ashtray for either weeks on end or a very long night of chain-smoking.

The rest of the house is a mystery though, and so she sets off to explore it, mapping out cupboards and a bathroom and a bedroom and another porch out back.

She circles back towards the bedroom.

She doesn't know what she expected. Left-over signs of Ygritte's presence, maybe, or of Dany's.

But it's only Jon. Dark navy bed sheets that have been washed too many times, another ashtray on the bedside table, just as full as the first, and an empty bottle of whiskey beside it. Open drawers. Shirts hanging inside a dresser, another pair of black boots. A black notebook full of accounts (Jon's) and another black notebook full of different accounts (the mill's). There's a drawing pinned to the wall of a stick figure fending off a bear-like monster with a sword. Sansa would have guessed who made it even without her sister's messy signature.

For the first time, it occurs to her that Jon might know where Arya is. Arya's always treated him like a brother, far more than her or Robb or Bran and Rickon ever did. He loved her dearly, used to call her "little sister."

Sansa touches the faded outline of the sword-wielding figure. The paper is rough and crinkled.

_When this is over, and if he knows where to find her, maybe I can..._

"Sansa?"

She jumps back, disoriented, then thinks to answer, "Here."

Jon appears in the doorway. He's removed his jacket.

"I'll heat up some soup," he says. "Then you'll take those pills, get yourself some sleep. Here."

He crosses over to the cupboard, tugs a shirt off a hanger.

"Get out of that bloody thing."

He doesn't wait to see if she'll obey. Before she can do more than pick up the shirt where it landed on the bed, he's left the room again.

 

 

 

 

She retreats to the shower.

As the water beats down on her shoulders, she looks down and sees it disappear into the drain, turned brown by the grit of a day spent in the wetlands and woods. She feels a surge of relief, as if she might yet scrub the past week off her body along with the mud. But soon dizziness overtakes her and she has to look up, and now it’s Robb that she sees, blue eyes staring back at her through the foggy pane of the shower stall.

For every five seconds of relief, there’s a whole minute of staring death in the eye as she waits for the wave of nausea to subside.

 

 

 

 

“You okay?” Jon asks, when he hears her bare feet padding on the kitchen floor.

He turns, takes in the shirt and her bare legs and her wet hair, and she sees him swallow. It’s the effect she was looking for. In fact, she didn’t expect this much. The slightest of frowns, maybe. But it’s all there for her to read: how his throat contracts and his fingers curl upon the countertop, how his eyes deliberately travel down from the hanging shirttails to her bare feet, and then back up towards the pale glimpse of skin showing through the open collar.

“How long?” she asks.

Jon cocks his head, brows furrowed. He’s standing by the hob, stirring something that smells like potato soup. Or he’d been stirring it. At present the spoon just heaves along with the forgotten brew.

“How long have you had your eye on me?” she elaborates.

She likes to think that she’d have noticed such looks. They wouldn’t even have needed to be as frankly appreciative as the one he just gave her. But she can’t remember him looking at her _at all_ , not once until she came back from town, and by then she’d assumed it had to do with her new city clothes, the way the skirt did little to conceal her long legs. She’d bought the skirt to please Petyr, maybe even with a mind to ensnare him.

Catching Jon, instead, of all people, had made her feel strange, exhilarated and vaguely guilty, as if she’d set out to hunt a wild hog and had shot some endangered species instead.

“I had a thought you might be snooping,” Jon says.

“I wasn’t snooping!” Sansa protests, though she’s well aware that she was.

Jon has an unexpected smile. She profits from this breach in his defenses to steal closer, and under pretense of turning off the hob, she gets within reach of his arms, waiting for him to make a move.

“How long?” she repeats.

“A while,” Jon says, taking the required step and pulling her against him, a little too close to his thoughtful gaze.

“That’s what you told Dany.” Sansa hesitates. “I want to know. If it was... If it was the day I came to see you.”

"You kept well away for months.”

Sansa couldn't say what surprises her the most, the reproach itself or the bitterness in his voice.

"You told me to," she reminds him.

"Didn't tell you to avoid me entirely, did I?"

"I'm here now," she whispers, running her hand up his arm.

Pulling herself up, bad ribs and all, she rubs her nose against his, and swallows a sigh of relief when he tilts his head and gives her a kiss.

The first one is brief; the second has her swaying. Maybe Jon notices and that's why he puts his arm around her, to hold her up.

She wants to tell him that he can take more than he does – that he'll have to, or she'll just fall asleep right here against him, head rolling onto his shoulder, letting his smell settle over her again. The cigarettes and the smell of the mill, almost palpable, thick and dusty like a handful of wood shavings, and the woods, the dampness of the woods in winter, all of it enough to weigh down on her eyelids, make her sag a little between his arms.

She shakes her head. She tries to fight it.

And because it worked so well in the wetlands, she brings her lips close to his ear and tells him, in a hot whisper, "My boy, my dangerous boy. Is it true then? Do you fuck the fierce little she- wolves?"

Jon's head snaps back, his grey eyes wide. Then a smile steals over his features.

"No," he rasps, and chucks her chin. "Just the one, and I won't touch her until she's had some sleep. Come on. Where’s your pills?"

He steps around her, but he makes a point of bumping her hip and his hand lingers on her stomach, making sure she doesn’t just topple over.

Sansa holds on to the counter and gives her heart rate time to settle.

Before he returns she allows herself the one, vindictive thought, conjuring up the memory of Dany’s contemptuous glare.

_You can try to take him from me, but I'll fight you. I'll give it all I got and I'll fight you._

 

 

 

 

When she won't sit down, worried that she'll just fall over, he feeds her the soup right here by the hob, spoonful after spoonful like he'd nurse a wounded animal, watching for her swallows, brushing the hair back from her black eye and her bruised cheekbone.

She opens her mouth for the pills, for the glass of water, and then for the kiss that comes after that, sucking softly on his lower lip, giving him a small smile. _I'm still here, I'm still awake._

It doesn't last long, though, and minutes later she's curled up on his bed and her eyes are fluttering shut.

The last thing she sees is Jon mulling about, going to empty the ashtray and shoving an armful of magazines under the bed and she thinks, _He's still a boy after all. He wants to impress me._

And then the trees close around her and she stumbles into a strange land of static dreams, where the light is that of the forest on a winter morning but the air is quiet, and she's alone but for the reflection of Robb's face in the still pond at her feet.

 

 

 

 

Jon is sleeping with his head against her hip, his legs draped over hers. He must have been trying to avoid her injuries but all she can think of is that it makes him look like Ghost, sleeping there pretty much at her feet.

She reaches down to touch his hair, worries it loose from its tie so that the dark curls spill between her fingers. He shifts in his sleep, muffling a groan against her side. In the semidarkness she sees his eyes blink open, taking in the rumpled shirt and her bare legs and her faded cotton underwear.

He won't notice that it's faded, she reminds herself. He won't care. She'd dressed to bury a body, not with the thought that he would see her underwear.

"Still treating me like a dog, I see," Jon says.

In answer, she gives his hair a hearty tug and he retaliates with a bite, teeth digging into the tender flesh of her hip.

The thought is half a memory, something she might have heard somewhere, spoken in a scornful tone. _Ah, the mating habits of wolves._

She lets her fingers sink deeper into his hair and gives it a harder pull, says – pleads – “Don’t go back to sleep.”

"I'll take you to work, don't worry," he mumbles.

"That's not... That's not what I meant."

"Hmm?"

"Don't..."

She cuts off abruptly.

 _Don't make fun of me,_ she'd been about to say. But he’s slipped his fingers under the elastic of her underwear and the words have left her, so she keeps silent as he gives the loose cotton a sharp tug, pulling it down around her knees.

Sansa kicks it off the rest of the way, thankful for the lack of light. It had been dark in his kitchen on that day as well, some three or four months ago. It made it easier. She's never been particularly self-conscious, has heard often enough that she’s pretty. Whatever qualms she might have had of showing off her body disappeared over the summer, as she swam length after length in Petyr and Lysa's swimming pool.

This is different, however. As if the light might shatter something between them. She can see him well enough, besides.

Maybe it's just that they're nocturnal creatures, the both of them.

She thought he would climb over her and she’d braced herself for the awkwardness of it, Jon trying not to put any weight on her stomach and ribs, while she held on to him and prayed he didn't crush her.

So she can’t hold back a little high-pitched cry when she feels his hair brushing her thighs, his breath warm between her legs.

 _One day you'll decide you want to try it,_ Margaery had told her, a day maybe after she'd first let a boy go down on her. (It can't have been Joff and Sansa sure as hell hopes it wasn't Robb.)

 _Never,_ she'd said, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

Margaery never has to know, though. How she clutches the pillow with both hands and lets her mouth run away with her, breathy encouragements and endless repetitions of Jon's name, because each time she says it, he rubs his nose against her clit. She keeps him trapped between her clenched thighs, desperate to make this last as long as she can.

Whenever he raises his head, she reaches down. Wipes his mouth with unsteady fingers, and lets him lick her hand.

In the midst of it, it reassures her, this continued strangeness of touch between them, as if in some other life they’d shared a den. Wrapped up around each other, snout to back. Russet fur rubbing against black.

Another stroke of his tongue and she unravels, hips bucking against his steady hands. The relief that follows is nothing like the clean, oblivious comfort of Melisandre’s pills. She feels vibrantly awake, awake and happy and maybe even hopeful.

As if this isn’t just the endpoint of several months of frustrated desire, but also, maybe, the beginning of something else.

“Alright?” Jon asks, head leaning against her leg.

She has neither the words nor the necessary breath to answer him, so she grips his hair again, and pulls until he moves over her. He gives her a quick kiss and a brief nuzzle and he settles down at her side.

Turning slightly, Sansa sets to undoing the knots she’s made in his damp hair.

“What time is it?” she whispers.

Jon reaches down, lifting a battered watch from the floor.

“Time to drive you to the bar, if you’re doing the morning shift. You’ll be late.”

With a sigh, she lets go of his hair. It takes her a few minutes to pull herself from the bed, though once she’s up reality reasserts itself, and the thought of Cersei firing her is enough to send her scrambling for her underwear.

“Sansa.”

He's picked up his smokes and matches. The sudden flare as he lights the cigarette gives her an unexpected glimpse of what he looks like at night. Disheveled hair, loose t-shirt and shorts, like a ghostly vision of the boy behind the man - Jon when he was still soft and sweet, and the girls at school called him “cute”.

"Tonight, I'll take you out. You and the boys. If you'll come."

She stares at him.

"Out," she repeats. "Out... Out where?"

"You’ll see,” he says, with one of these sad smiles that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You can wear a dress, if you want.”

“A dress.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I can wear a dress,” she says, a little defensively.

“Good.”

Waiting for him to elaborate further is pointless, so she gives up and heads for the bathroom, spurred on by the thought of Cersei’s disapproving glare.

 

 

 

 

Jon drops her off at work in yesterday’s muddy jeans and another one of his shirts, her wet hair gathered in a haphazard braid. He grabs a sulky Ghost by the scruff of his neck and pulls him out of the truck.

“He doesn’t like being tied up out there. Let him roam, he’ll be back if you need him.”

Sansa turns her face up towards Jon and accepts a swift kiss on the lips and another on her cold brow.

“I’ll see you after work,” she says.

She hums for Ghost to follow her as she crosses the silent car park.

The sky hasn’t yet decided on whether it should be morning or night, and so the first curls of light on the horizon merge into the vast canopy of stars.

Sansa turns to watch the truck disappear down the road.

Despite her lateness, she takes another second to enjoy this fragile feeling of peace. For now at least her troubles are over, and Jon wants her, and the sky above has the look and feel of dark blue velvet.

Ghost licks her palm.

“Yes, yes,” she whispers, “I’m going.”

And so she does, though reluctantly, turning back every few steps to breathe in another gust of the cool night air.


	12. Fiddles

Cersei doesn’t quite frown. Her blonde eyebrows draw together and the side of her mouth goes down slightly, just enough that you can tell she isn’t pleased.

“I had to call in one of the Frey girls,” she says. “If I had any sense, I’d hire her instead of you. Sara? Serra? Sally? Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re prettier and they like a pretty girl. What happened to your face?”

She pours herself a shot and slides one across the bar for Sansa. Sansa glances down at it, rather warily, but she tosses it back all the same. It tastes like caramel.

“Didn’t Myrcella tell you?”

“She mentioned something about a run-in with the Boltons,” Cersei says, taking the smallest sip of her rum. “She didn’t say why.”

“You know why.”

Sansa gives her a long hard look. She can open both her eyes now and her face is no longer swollen, though the skin around her right eye remains black and blue.

She’s rewarded when Cersei looks down first, running a manicured finger around the rim of her shot glass.

“Mark my words,” Cersei says. “It doesn’t pay off to be courageous, or in love. It never does. I’ll expect you to come to work tomorrow, to make up for the day you missed.”

“I will.”

“And don’t be late this time. I don’t care that it’s Sunday, or that he’s fucked you so hard you can barely walk.”

Sansa opens her mouth, but Cersei waves a dismissive hand.  
  
“Keep your fire for the customers, Birdie. I’d like to enjoy my drink in peace.”

 

 

 

 

It’s a busy Saturday morning, with the usual crowd of truckers and bikers but also families, on their way to visit relatives for a day or two. There’s little else to do hereabouts, especially in winter. The Starks themselves used to stop by the _Mountain Lion_ when she was a child, whenever they went off to see her mother’s side of the family. The Tullys lived three valleys over – most of them probably still do.

Until now, it hadn't occurred to her that she might call on them for help. One could argue that she'd reached out to her uncle Edmure when she'd received news of the will, and that he’d been quick to brush her away. Might be that she should have insisted.

Maybe she still could. She has her own phone now, so there'd be no need to rely on the Seaworths’ good graces. She might even be able to do it without anyone listening in on the conversation. If she so wished, she could leave Edmure a message every day. She could leave him a message every _hour_.

“I’ll have a large cup of coffee, two beers, a Coke and your number.”

Startled out of her reverie, she finally pays attention to the table before her. Three boys and a girl. They’re not from the valley. At a glance, Sansa would say that they come from a town beyond the mountains. College students, probably. The one who spoke is very handsome, broad-shouldered and blond, with regular features and a dimpled smile.

 _A picture in a magazine_.

“I’ll get you the drinks,” Sansa says.

She hears them laugh as she walks off. _“Wow, Harry, that was some brush-off!” “You need to stop hitting on every waitress we run into.”_ And in a slightly more solemn tone, though still brimming with curiosity, _“What d’you think happened to her face?”_

They’re not the first to wonder. An hour ago it was an old couple, headed for the frozen waterfalls. _“Garlic, sweetheart!”_ The old lady had said. _“It does wonders against bruises.”_ And there’d been the young biker with the bull tattoo who’d offered to take care of “the asshole” for her.

“Ain’t you sweet,” she’d said. And because she could tell that he meant it, she’d given him a free plate of Lancel’s pancakes behind Cersei’s back.

The students’ curiosity is different, however. She knows that they think her strange, just like she thinks them strange, with their bright winter jackets and their ebullience. They remind her of certain kids at her school, those who behaved like they did not have a care in the world, like it was the world’s duty to take care of them. Like Joffrey, or Margaery and Loras.

Maybe she’d even been like them, once upon a time.

When she returns with the drinks, the girl tells her, unprompted, “We’re going to my father’s cabin for a few days.”

“Man, this vacation is so overdue,” another guy says.

The blond one, the one they called Harry, he doesn’t speak. He just watches her. There’s nothing threatening about his appraising gaze, so she chooses not to remark on it. She collects what money they owe her and a fairly decent tip and returns to the bar.

She’s in the middle of pouring a dozen beers for a gang of leather-clad bikers when Harry joins her. He flashes her another one of these dimpled smiles. His front teeth are slightly crooked, which is a welcome relief, what with all the symmetry going on in his face.

“Hey,” he says. “We’re leaving for three days, but I’ll make sure we swing by on the way back. And then maybe you can give me your number? ... And in the meantime, maybe I could get your name?”

She’s so taken aback by the ordinariness of the whole scene – from his rather poor attempt at flirting to his over-confidence to the elbowing that’s going on by the door, where his friends are waiting for him – that she answers without thinking.

“Sansa.”

“Sansa. Cool. I’m Harry. Well. I’ll be back for your number, then. Oh, and you must hear that all the time, but you’re really gorgeous. Even with the...” He motions towards the bruises, then seems to realize that this wasn’t the best way to end this conversation. He clears his throat. “Hmm. Yeah. Okay. See you.”

“See you,” Sansa repeats, with a faintly mocking smile.

As they walk out, it’s like she’s seeing another life walk out the door, one that she might have led if she’d taken Petyr up on his offer. College and a dorm room and a boy to kiss at parties and to cry about when they’d inevitably break up. And she might even have been satisfied, because she wouldn’t have known what she was missing. If anyone had pointed to Jon a few months back and told her, _Him, that’s the one you’ll choose,_ she’d have laughed. Laughed or maybe pulled a face.

_Him? But he’s always sad and he smokes all the time and I’m past the age where, in “hot and scary”, the “hot” cancels the “scary”._

“When you’re done daydreaming, Birdie, your regular’s waiting. Table 5.”

Her first thought is of Sandor Clegane, so that she turns around with a smile, ready to compensate for the trucker’s ever-present scowl.

Ramsay smiles back. There’s a high chance that he was already smiling, long before she noticed him.

“My beloved wife!” he calls. “Coffee, please. Lots of sugar.”

It’s only as she returns with the coffee that she notices that there’s something strange, or at least different, about him.

It’s the clothes, she realizes. He’s traded his form-fitting sweaters for a plaid shirt, and he wears it tucked into his jeans, dark leather belt pulled tight around his hips.

“Yes,” he says, looking down at his new get-up. “I thought real hard about how to get your attention. I can’t do much about the hair, but I got the clothes right, yeah?” He wriggles his fingers. “I might even get myself one of them hand tattoos. I hear they don’t stick, though...”

She pours the coffee, can’t resist saying, through gritted teeth, “I thought Roose was done with this whole business.”

“Done?” Ramsay laughs, lifting a handful of sugar cubes from the bowl. “He’s changed gears, that’s all. If your man gives you his side of the woods, we stand to win big on the long run. That’s how Roose sees things, at any rate. Me... Me, I’m tired of waiting.”

His pale blue eyes cut back to hers.  
  
“I made a promise to your brother, that I’d take care of you. I’m a man of my word.”

Sansa holds his gaze, hoping against all hope that it’ll keep him from noticing how her hands and legs are shaking. The moment he looks down, she spins round, and she’s a few steps away from the table when he says, with a conspiratorial grin, “So. Did you open it?”

She freezes, the coffee swishing around in the pot.

“You know what, I don’t think you did. If it’d been me, I would’ve. Make sure there wasn’t anything missing.”

She refuses to rise to the bait. Besides, she trusts that he’s too proud of himself to miss such an occasion to gloat.

“Generally, it’d be the teeth or the fingers. Makes it harder to identify the body. Soooo... Did your brother have all his teeth? Did you open his mouth to check? When you kissed him goodbye, maybe?”

The only thing to do – the safe thing – is to start walking again. Sansa knows it. It doesn’t make it any easier to do so, not when she wants to upend the scalding coffee over his head, and when the thought of Robb’s mutilated body has made her legs so wobbly she’s not sure she’ll be able to move.

They should have checked. But if they had and there was indeed something missing, what could they have done about it?

“Offer’s still on the table,” Ramsay says. He’s no longer smiling, but his face remains merry. Eyebrows lifted and guileless eyes, waiting for the next joke, like he’s certain, somehow, that there’ll be one. “I’ll take you. Even with your...” He gestures vaguely. “Your messed up face. That and...” Another gesture, downwards this time. “You know. How you spread your legs for Shotgun Jon. I’d overlook that. Oh! Maybe you can help me with something. I’ve always wondered. Did he really kill Viserys Targaryen? Because, you know. There’s those who say it was the cattle-farmer. The rodeo man!”

Finally, because she no longer has the faintest clue what he’s talking about, she finds the strength to turn away. She heads back for the kitchen, walking as fast as she can. Whatever he says next is swallowed by the sound of a dozen other tables.

Never has she been so grateful for the Saturday family crowd.

 

 

 

 

She doesn’t stay long in the kitchen, a few minutes at most, but it’s enough for her legs to stop shaking. When she steps back outside, Cersei shoots her a knowing glance. Sansa quickly turns towards the nearest table, to give herself some purpose. As she takes down new orders and clears plates and her circuit brings her closer and closer to Ramsay’s table, she tries to steel herself. She tries to think of something clever to say, something that will help her keep up the pretense that his words haven’t had any effect on her.

When she arrives at the table, however, he’s gone. Predictably, he didn’t tip.

 

 

 

 

Halfway through the afternoon, she comes into the kitchen to find Shae chatting with Lancel as he pours ketchup over a row of overcooked burgers.

"Oh my god, Birdie," Shae says, hands flying to her mouth. Her lipstick is a light shade of purple that suits her improbable tan. "You poor thing! Did no one tell you to put ice on it?"

"I did," Sansa says, setting down her pile of dirty plates in the sink. "That's why it's no longer swollen."

"You've got to use one of these creams... I'll get you some, don't worry. And you shouldn't have come!"

Sansa huffs. Her way of saying, _"Cersei would’ve had my neck."_ Shae grimaces. In time, they've perfected a language between them, in order to be able to communicate in front of Cersei’s cousin.

"Well, you're going home now," Shae decides. "I'm here on time for once, so... You can leave."

"Thanks," Sansa says, with a smile of gratitude.

"Wait, I'll throw stuff in a bowl for your dog," Lancel offers.

"Thanks," she repeats, and turns away before they can see that she's on the brink of tears.

It's only decent behavior and it shouldn't get to her like this, except that Ramsay's insinuations are still fresh in her mind – the itch palpable beneath her skin – and she's ready to take any balm, particularly if it’s given free of charge.

"Oh, wait," Shae says, as Sansa pushes open the fire escape with her hip, holding the bowl aloft. "Someone asked after you yesterday. That big trucker woman, the one who doesn't look like a woman."

“You’re being mean,” Sansa says, resolved to defend Brienne, though her curiosity promptly takes over. “What did she say?”

"She'll be back in two days.” Shae looks at her closely. “She said to tell you she could drive you, and the girl is waiting for you... What girl?"

_Jeyne. Robb’s Jeyne._

"Distant cousin," Sansa lies, though she knows the truth will come to Shae's ears soon enough. “Thanks for letting me know.”

 

 

 

 

She waits for Jon in the parking lot, sitting in the old rattan chair. Ghost darts in between the trucks, under a thin, snowy drizzle, and as he draws closer she can’t resist flicking a little water a him, knowing it will make him jump back, that he’ll shake his head as if he could dislodge the three droplets that have landed on his snout.

There used to be a swimming pool at the house. Nothing fancy, not like the built-in pool at Petyr and Lysa’s with the pale blue tiles and the spongy stone around it, which seemed to suck the water from your feet. The Stark pool was three-foot deep at best, big and round and plastic, the kind you filled in with the garden hose. During Robb and Sansa’s childhoods, they'd bring it out every summer, though it had begun to fall out of fashion by the time Arya learned to swim.

Still, Arya had stumbled upon it a few years back, and she’d dragged it out into the front yard. Sansa must have been fifteen or sixteen. Too old to paddle in a plastic pool, or so she’d told Robb before he threw her screaming into the water. She remembers the strong plastic smell, and how for a second as she went in the rim of the pool rose above her as if she was a kid again, too short to reach the top without her father’s help.

Out of sheer pettiness, she’d stayed underwater as long as she could, and sure enough, by the time she came up, Robb was gone. The sun shone on the forest and Jon and Ghost were coming out of the trees.

Jon must have still been in high school. Senior year, like Robb. But Ned had died – he’d died that same year, in fact – and so Jon was already living alone on the other side of the woods.

 _“He’s just a boy,”_ someone, Sansa can’t remember who, had told her mother.  
  
_“He wants to exploit these woods, he better get used to living on his own,”_ Catelyn had answered.  _“Get a sense of what it means to be responsible.”_

Whatever her mother said, Jon was still a boy back then. A boy in a black t-shirt, with a bird's nest of hair.

"Are you sinking?" he'd asked.

Sansa must have said something dismissive, because she can remember the face he'd pulled, with a well-practiced twitch of the mouth that served to contain any and all grudges.

He'd had a lot of grudges, even as a surly teen.

Sansa had flicked water at Ghost, maybe to try and lighten the atmosphere. The dog had taken a frantic leap back.

He'd returned soon after, though, tucking his head above the rim of the pool, waiting to be petted. Sansa had obliged him, stroking the soft white fur and leaning in to rub her cheek against his snout, as she used to do with Lady, back when she had a dog of her own.

"He doesn't know any better," Jon said, coming to join them.

He went down on his knees by the pool, arms crossed over the rim, the fingers of one hand dipping into the water. All of a sudden Sansa had felt bad about her opening salve. He looked sad and tired and he lived in what she still pictured as a dirty shack in the middle of the forest.

She flicked some water at Jon's nose and before he could edge back in surprise, she’d reached for his hair and... Oh, it must have lasted a second. A quick stroke of the nose, her wet hair falling across his face. The same greeting she’d given the dog, except that it didn’t feel quite the same with Jon, because – as she came to think afterwards, a little mortified – girls and boys don’t _nuzzle_.

"You're wet," eighteen-year old Jon had said, right before she flung enough water in his face to drown them both.

 

 

 

 

 _How long have you had your eye on me?,_ she’d asked, and now, maybe she could answer, _I think I know when_.

"Hey," she says, climbing into the truck.

Jon turns towards her and the kiss skids against his cheek, lands on his mouth. She allows it to last, holding on to his shirt as she chases him back against the seat.

When she draws back, Jon's eyes are coal-dust grey. His gaze lingers on her lips.

"Careful," he says. "I could get used to that."

"To what?" she whispers. "You can get used to me. You can kiss me whenever you like."

"Yeah?"

She gives a contented hum, tucks her face into his shoulder as he lowers his head to kiss her again.

She should tell him about Ramsay. She used to have a better grip on the things that mattered – she used to be able to put her problems first and Jon second.

 _I can tell him later. No need to ruin this. I'll tell him after the next kiss._  
  
_When he stops touching my hair._  
  
_After the next bend in the road._  
  
_Tomorrow._

 

 

 

 

There's noise in the garage when they get to the house. Sansa goes to investigate, thinking she'll find Summer or Shaggydog. They sneak in there sometimes, and then she has to sweep up a mess of dismembered toys and scattered mattress filling.

This time however, the sliding door is open, and Davos is bent over her father's old car, peering under the hood.

"I hope you don't mind," he says. "I brought the boys back and I thought I'd have a look..."

Jon drops a kiss on Sansa’s temple and heads off towards the house. She sees his hand move away from his back.

"No, I don't mind," she says. "Though you've done more than enough to help us, already..."

"It's what neighbors do," Davos shrugs.

It would be mightily rude to just answer, _No, it's not._

So she hides her misgivings as best she can, all these decades of inherited distrust.

"I'll find a way to pay you back, someday.”

"I'll just take a thank you," Davos answers, a thin smile showing through his greying beard.

"Thank you."

 _I'll still repay you,_ she thinks, and from his soft chuckle, she can tell that he's heard it, somehow.

 

 

 

 

"What kind of dress?"

She wishes she could take a picture of Jon's face. His confusion seems to be verging on fear.

"I don't know," he says. "Any dress."

"Come on."

She pulls him towards her room. The boys are nowhere to be seen, but she'd heard Rickon's excited shouts on the other side of the house when they arrived.

She sits Jon down on her bed. He still has that same dubious look on his face.  
  
"I have a few," she explains. "They're new and I don't get to wear them often..."

She pulls them out from the cupboard, a pile of colorful fabrics, dangling straps and flouncy skirts. There's even the one sequined number, in sparkling red and silver. It's unlikely that she'll ever wear it. She drops them in Jon's lap and she watches as he reaches for lime green cotton, runs the back of his fingers over the sequins. He strokes a dark green velvet skirt like he would a cat's fur.

"Where d'you get those?"

She knows what he's thinking about. Of frayed jeans and shapeless sweaters. Of faded yellow underwear. The bright burst of color of the dresses is almost obscene, as if she'd suddenly turned on the dirty neons of the bar in the middle of the forest, shedding green light upon the snow.

"My uncle," she says.

Jon's head snaps up, his hand promptly lifting from the topmost dress. Dark blue lace. That one she'd tried on at the house, giving the short skirt a twirl as Petyr looked on from the couch.

"Pick one," she tells Jon. "It doesn't matter where they came from. I didn't get to wear them with him."

That's not exactly true. Petyr had tied on the lime green straps for her. He'd slid a hand up her leg, under the sequined skirt. She bites her lip as she sees Jon's hand edge back towards the green dress.

"The blue one?" she suggests. "The dark blue one."

Pulling it out of the pile, Jon shakes it free of the others and removes the hanger. He holds it out to her without a word.

Sansa takes it, suddenly worried that she might have made a mistake. And yet she doesn't know what to say, or how to chase Petyr's ghost from the room.

"If he comes back," Jon says. She's seen this face before, the dark scowl and the clenched jaw. It's the look that had Ramsay take a cautious step back, retreating beyond the glare of the headlights. "If he comes back, I'll..."

"Shotgun Jon," she mutters.

"What?"

"It's over. It was over when I decided to come back. When I drove back here and... I drove straight to see you, remember?"

She's not sure what she's trying to say, and his dark glare has her take an instinctive step forward, and then another.

Jon shoves the dresses off his lap and holds out his hand to her.

Sansa glances towards the door and back.

"You can be quiet, can't you?" he says.

She takes his hand, has time for a breathy "Yes" – and she hears a creak in the corridor; Bran calling her name.

Jon has a rueful smile.  
  
"Gonna be a hell of a long night if I can't have you now," he mutters. Yet he rises, and goes to open the door.

 

 

 

 

Davos offers his car so the four of them can travel together. Sansa waits until the boys are in the car and Jon has folded Bran's chair in the trunk. Then and only then does she snatch his sleeve and whisper, fast, "Ramsay came to the bar today."

She jumps back and runs to the other side of the car before she can see his face – she's felt him stiffen, back going ramrod-straight, and that was frightening enough, how his arm jerked under her hand.

Inside the car, they won't be able to talk about it, and hopefully the drive will be long enough to cool his nerves.

 

 

 

 

"It won't be over until I kill him," Jon says, minutes after they've left, as if he can't hold it in any longer, despite the poor timing. Glancing in the mirror, Sansa sees Rickon shift in his seat. Bran is looking at her.

She shakes her head, refusal or denial.

"Later," Jon mutters. "We'll talk."

With his ominous tone, it becomes difficult to remember that he's taking them out, that she's wearing a dress and that minutes before, he was trying to get her to sit on his knee.

And with the trees closing in around them, the world grows eerie and dark, and it begins to feel like they're driving towards their unmarked graves.

 

 

 

 

At first she thinks they're going to the mill. They drive around the woods and turn left instead of right, which would be the mill, as opposed to Jon's house.

She's been there only once, to accompany Robb. She has more memories of the forest walk with her brother than of the mill itself. Jon had been sullen and uncommunicative, as usual, and the machines were noisy and she'd spent most of their visit pleading with Robb to leave.

The machines are silent now and the various buildings are plunged into darkness, apart from a large warehouse at the end of the lot, from which music spills into the front yard and the surrounding woods.

"I thought the lot of you could lighten up," Jon says, with palpable sarcasm. "And I wanted to show you off."

"All of us?" Bran asks, serious as always.  
  
Jon turns around in his seat. "Yes, all of you," he tells Bran, equally serious.

 

 

 

 

Jon pushes Bran's chair and Sansa and Rickon walk beside them, with Rickon holding Sansa's hand, stubbornly pulling it when he feels her hesitate. The yard outside the warehouse is full of smoking shadows. Sansa tightens her jacket around her.

She's uncomfortably aware of her bare legs, of her coppery hair and her bruises and what kind of message this will send to the people assembled here.

_The Starks stand together._  
  
_Jon Snow has a new red-haired girl in his house and in his bed._

_Girl needed a few men killed. Found the right man for the job._

Some of her misgivings vanish the moment they go in, however, because she hasn't been to a proper party in _years._ Admittedly, there'd been Roose Bolton's wedding, where Robb had made her dance. Her brother was an enthusiastic dancer, if not a good one. Since then, it's only been the occasional club night in town over the summer.

She'd missed it. The fiddles and the banjos and the three or four generations dancing on the dull floorboards. The dancing itself – some of it traditional and some of it not so much. There's a buffet and people mulling about and when they come through the door, most of the loiterers turn to stop and stare.

"Come meet Tormund, officially," Jon says.

He stirs her towards a big man with bright red hair and a voluminous beard, whom she recognizes from Jon's expedition to the Boltons. They catch him in the middle of a lively tale, his arms spread wide as the bearded men around him listen with various degrees of disbelief. Sansa only hears the end of a sentence, "... and I tell you that bear liked me!", before Tormund sees Jon and he stops short. There's a gleam in his pale blue eyes.

"Jon Snow!" he exclaims, bringing a large hand down upon Jon's shoulder. Jon sways a little.

"Tormund," he says, making a valiant effort to stay upright. "This is Sansa Stark... Bran Stark..." He looks around at waist level, gaze falling upon Rickon who appears to have been adopted by a cluster of old women at the farthest end of the room. "Rickon Stark," Jon finishes, as Rickon evades the gnarled hand reaching for his hair, and runs away with a handful of what could be biscuits or kettle corn.

"That's a nice dress," one of the men says. Given how much of the dress is visible with her arms wrapped around her jacket, he probably meant "nice legs", and indeed she can see that a few of the men are staring, slightly bug-eyed.

Given Jon's immediate sideways step, this didn't get past him, either. Sansa follows him, swift as running water, sliding an arm around his waist so he'll have to accommodate her, with a whisper as thin as smoke, "Down, boy," that he heeds without quite noticing, body relaxing under her touch.

In the blink of an eye Tormund's inebriated companions have been whisked away and it's only the four of them: the big red-haired man, Sansa and a scowling Jon who seems to wonder what possessed him to bring her here, and Bran who appears to be drinking beer from a bottle that she quickly snatches out of his hand.

"Sans'," he protests, voice so much like Robb's that her heart skips a beat. 

"Of course you can have one," Sansa says, embarrassed.

Jon glances at her and when she fails to move, he takes the bottle from her frozen fingers and hands it back to Bran.

"How have you been, girl?" Tormund interjects, none too smoothly. "Your face looks better."

"I'm fine," Sansa says, and she hears Jon laugh, brief and harsh like a bird's croak.

Tormund's gaze softens. "I hope the boy's letting you rest. That's how it starts, ain't it, you'll want to stay in bed with her all day, but you wanna take..."

_"Tormund."_

The man grins.

"Have you taken them to the old bear yet? He'll like them. Might be more inclined to give you the mill if he sees you're not the lone wolf he thought you were."

"The old bear?" Sansa repeats.

"Mormont," Tormund says. "Good man. Getting old. Moment he croaks, your boy here will get the place."

"Things don't work like this around here," Jon says. Sansa notices that he's speaking lower than Tormund, presumably to shield their conversation from eavesdroppers.

This confirms what she thought. Tormund and most of the mill workers don't look like the men from these mountains, with their long faces and their careful words. And because of that, the gathering is livelier than any Sansa has attended in recent memory.

She feels a surge of gratitude towards Jon, that he’d have thought to take them along – that he’d have known they’d enjoy it, all three of them.

"Take your girl dancing," Tormund tells Jon. "I'll keep the boy occupied."

"I'm not a boy," Bran informs him.

Tormund raises a pale red eyebrow. He gives Bran a searching look.

"Hmm. Maybe not. See, I thought you were, because you're Snow's cousin, and Snow's a boy. Green as grass, barely weaned..."

"Come," Jon mutters to Sansa. "That's enough for one evening."

He's stirring her towards the door, searching his pockets for his cigarettes. Sansa hesitates for a second at most before she digs her heels in the dusty floorboards.

"No, no, I want to dance."

She’d take a picture of this look, too, if she could – every moment when the tension drains out of his face and he stares at her like a deer caught in the headlights, grey eyes open wide and with his mouth not quite certain whether it should smile or pout.

"You want to dance," he repeats.  
  
"Just a bit?" she ventures. "I don't care if you're not..."

"Take that jacket off."

 

 

 

 

One tune and Ramsay's threats become little more than a distant screeching that the fiddles can easily drown out. Another and she could almost believe that she's back at Roose's wedding, and that it's Robb making her spin, strong hands guiding her along. Almost but not quite, because it turns out that Jon's a much better dancer than her brother, sure-footed and lithe. When she turns he knows to follow her, close enough that her skirt whips his legs. By the third tune she's laughing, as if they were children again, messing around at the back of a hall as they try to emulate the adults.

Jon doesn't laugh but he's smiling, as if he were enjoying this, too.

And it suddenly strikes her that maybe he does. She's been assuming that he brought them here to please her. A show of good will, so to speak. It hadn’t occurred to her that Jon's understanding of a good time might include anything but whiskey and cigarettes.

When the song ends and before they're caught along in the next one, she collapses against him, paying little attention to her residual aches. Pulling him close, both arms wrapped tight around his neck, she whispers a breathless thank you.

"You're welcome, sweetheart," Jon says, flattening a hand against her back when he feels her shudder.

That’s what he'd called Dany, the night before. He’d wielded this term of endearment as if it were a weapon.

She doesn’t know how to tell him that, though, so she keeps her mouth shut.

Reaching into his back pocket, she pulls out the cigarettes and matches, right as a voice behind her says, "Jon! You came. I told you he'd come. And he brought Sansa! Hi, Sansa."

The gangly fellow holds out his hand to shake. He'd also been at the house with Jon and Tormund a couple days ago. Pyp, his name was. Narrow face, and he looks like he never did finish growing. He has a kind smile, soft dark eyes.

"I guess it's a good surprise," the second guy says, sounding thoroughly unconvinced. He's the one who'd driven Myrcella home.

"You remember Edd, Pyp," Jon says.

Sansa nods. "Hi," she smiles. The both of them turn red, whether it's because they didn't actually expect her to talk to them, or because she's still flushed from the dance, braid mostly undone, part of the bruising hidden under a careful layer of concealer.

Sansa taps Jon's shoulder, indicates the door. "I'll step out a minute, let you guys talk."  
  
"I can...," Jon begins to say.  
  
She cuts him off with a kiss.

"Talk to your friends," she orders. "I'll be back before you notice I'm gone."

"I doubt that," Jon frowns, and so she kisses him again, a little more decisively this time, feeling his mouth open under hers. His hand curves around her hip. By the time she steps back, he looks a little dazed.

She goes to retrieve Robb's jacket. When she can't find it in the corner that's been turned into a disorderly cloakroom, she takes Bran's instead.

She experiences a brief shock when she steps from the warm, cider-smelling warehouse into the cold night. The cigarette helps, though, and soon she's walking away from the light and the music and the drunken crowd of smokers around the door to seek the reassuring border of the woods.

Could she have had this, if the Boltons and Freys hadn't begun to prey on her woods? It seems unlikely. She’d have settled in town. She'd come back to visit her mother and her siblings every once in a while, and she'd see Jon once a year, maybe, if they invited him over for a birthday or some other occasion. He'd have found himself another girl.

Maybe she'd have seen his eyes linger, once or twice. She'd have blushed and pretended not to notice. She certainly wouldn't have told Robb. Her brother wouldn't have approved. He'd probably have fought Jon over it.

It's annoyingly easy to picture, Jon and Robb facing off against each other in these very woods; Robb's cold fury, _"I gave you your share of the forest. My sister was never part of the deal."_

She can't seem to come up with what Jon would have said in return. Maybe because, if Robb were still alive, Jon would never have made a move on her.

"Can I have a light?"

Sansa jumps. A boy is standing a few feet away from her, with the lights of the warehouse at his back.

"Sorry," he says. "Didn't mean to scare you. D'you have a light?"

She holds out the box of matches, hoping he'll light his cigarette and scram, but once he's done, he returns the box and comes to stand beside her. He's a little shorter than she is, dark-haired. That's all she can see with what little light there is, though she can tell he's from the mountains. His accent is the same as Jon's, as broad as it gets this far north of the valley.

"I saw you back there," he says. "You're beautiful." He says it deferentially, ducking his head, like he doesn't quite know how to handle a compliment. She can smell the whiskey on his breath, even with three or four feet of space between them.

"Thanks," she says, her tone carefully neutral.

She's trying to decide whether she should head back towards the warehouse, when he speaks again, in a rush of jumbled words and foul-smelling breath.

"I saw you in the woods and I know he's a killer, I know he strung up Thorne and Thorne was a good man. I saw you carrying that body in them Stark woods, you and Snow and the fisherman."

The cigarette is burning her fingers so Sansa drops it. She crushes it nervously underfoot.

Her eyes darting towards the yard, she catches a glimpse of a familiar silhouette, a tall man with a tall shadow stretching out in front of him.

"Jon. Jon!"

She begins to walk away from the trees. Jon meets her halfway, takes a look at her face and carries on to where the boy is still standing. If the kid had any sense, he'd have snuffed out the cigarette with its telltale glow.

She doesn't hear what they say to each other. It doesn't last long, and soon Jon is coming back. He walks with such angry purpose that for a moment, she thinks he'll go straight past her. But he holds out his hand and she lets him pull her back towards the mill.

"He saw us," she says.

"I know."

"Jon. If he talks..."

Jon stops abruptly and rounds on her.

"Olly won't talk," he says. "He knows he can't. Dirt I've got on him, I could bury him twenty feet deep. Don't worry about this."

"Jon," she tries, reaching for his arm. "You can't tell me..."

"He comes near you again, you let me know. I'll deal with it."

It's hard to tell from his tone if "dealing with it" implies more whispered threats or a bullet to the back of the head.

She must not look particularly convinced. He kisses her brow and promises, "He won't be any trouble. He's just a kid."

Sansa would point out the fundamental contradiction between Olly being a harmless kid and that same kid having caused enough trouble that it might outweigh Jon digging up a body in the woods.

At this point however, she's starting to measure the depth of all that Jon isn't telling her, and it's too great a chasm to be bridged by a single biting remark.

"Can we go home?" she asks.

Jon's expression turns wistful.

"Yeah. Yeah, we can. I'll drive you back. I'll sleep at your house, if that's okay with you. If Ramsay..."

"If that's okay with me," she repeats.

"I can tell you're angry at me, girl."

“It doesn't mean I don't want to sleep with you!" It comes out angrier than she meant it to, perhaps because of that derisive "girl," which tends to make her want to kiss and slap him in equal measure. "I want us to make these decisions together. What's a threat and what isn't and how to deal with Ramsay or anybody else!"

"No more of you wandering off alone to the Boltons, then. Fine."

"Fine," she agrees. "And you're not calling me sweetheart ever again."

"Fine," he says, and adds, in a yielding murmur, "Sansa."


	13. Night Birds

“The dogs will let us know if something’s wrong,” she reminds him, when she catches him glancing towards the window. He might not even have realized that he was doing it, or that his alertness has made him frown.

She hopes that the dogs won’t bark and that they’ll be allowed to continue a while undisturbed. Jon remains tense and she knows he’s considering getting up, pushing her off him to go snatch his jeans from wherever they fell and shoot something. A bird, probably. Certainly not Ramsay, because this isn't the kind of place where you can stage an attack without a dozen people and twice as many dogs knowing about it.

“They’d hear someone from a mile away,” she says, trying to make her voice as soft and as comforting as she can. “The gun’s right here.” She lets her hand skim over it on the bedside table, and then, realizing a little confused that she should have done this from the start, she gives a tentative roll of her hips.

This causes him to bury deeper inside her and his hands tighten upon her thighs. ( _"Where can I touch you?"_ he'd asked. _"Tell me where to put my hands so I don't hurt you."_ )

"Sansa. You've gotta move," he says, voice strained. "It's gotta be you."

Her first instinct is to protest. _I've no idea what I'm doing._ But that wouldn't be true, not anymore. She's heard how his breathing changed when she pushed against him, and from then on it's only a matter of how fast and how insistent she can be.

The last time she was in this position... it'd been in Joffrey's car. She'd drunkenly agreed to straddle his lap, just the once, because he'd said if they made out in the car he'd drive her up to the observatory. He never did, and all she got for that half hour of careless, brutal kissing were marks upon her throat and breasts.

There were several boys after Joffrey. She slept with two of them, and it wasn’t very pleasant – neither the quick tussle at the back of a dusty car, nor the time she followed one of Robb’s friends to his house, feeling stupidly brave for ignoring every motherly warning she’d ever been given.

In fact, what little experience she does have she owes to the sunny room at her aunt and uncle's, to Petyr's quick fingers and to the lazy disdain of his self-satisfied smile.

She won’t use any of that. Not now, and perhaps not ever.

She’ll have to improvise, then. To draw upon what Jon gives her. The pressure of his hands and the way his breathing stutters; his involuntary thrusts, pushing in another inch or so before he can master himself, and his tense whispers, as involuntary perhaps as the rest. "Yeah. Yeah, like that. Just... Good. Take it slow, girl. Take it slow."

"You're the one was in a hurry," Sansa mumbles.

Jon laughs, low enough that she can feel it rumble in his chest. It doesn't quite get past his lips.

She's had her hands in his hair since this all started and it must hurt him, because it feels as if she's channeling all her impatience in the tight clutch of her fists, but he hasn't let on, has only shut his eyes once or twice when the harsh pull forces him to tilt his head back.

Somewhere beneath her hands, lower down upon his back, she’s glimpsed a dark shape, another tattoo maybe. There’ll be time, later, to take a closer look.

"Stop holding back," she pleads. "I want you to move, too. I'm better. Stop holding back."

Even in the grey dark, when most of what she sees are shadows and darker shadows, she can make out the disbelief on his face, the narrowed eyes and the sarcastic smile.

"You're a pale girl," he says. "You think I can't see that bruising?"

She looks down at her stomach.

"I'm fine. It doesn't..." She cuts off with a surprised moan. He's leaned in to kiss her, to push the lie back inside her mouth, maybe, but at the same time she can feel him begin to answer the gentle motion of her hips. One hand moves up, palm flat against her lower back, and the other slides between her legs. The rough strokes more than make up for his unhurried pace. It's the only sign he gives that there might be impatience beneath all that slow, steady fucking, and she's grateful for it, this reminder that he can be desperate too.

That first time in his kitchen she'd felt at such a disadvantage, younger and burdened with cravings that she’d wanted to satisfy at once, if only so the pain and the headiness of wanting him would abate some.

She lets go of his hair to reach precipitously downwards, to grip his wrist and still his hand, but it's of little use, and she comes with her face tucked into his shoulder, muffling a frantic exhale against his neck. She rubs her nose against his skin for good measure. A way of saying thank you, or “I’m good,” or “I like your smell,” however he chooses to interpret it.

Jon frees his hand with a slight tug. "I'll be careful," he promises.

His arm slides around her waist and he lowers her down onto the bed, her back resting against the scratchy old covers.

He might be careful but he isn't gentle, forearms braced against the bed so he won’t put any weight on her stomach. Thrusting inside her as if he’d forgotten that minutes before, he was the one urging her to take it slow. Running her hands up his arms, Sansa can feel the strain in his muscles.

Without warning she shifts against him, little shoves of the hips. Jon swears and reaches for her hair with a trembling hand.

"Payback," he mutters, and pulls so hard that she whines.

Suddenly it becomes difficult to remember why she should speak as little as possible, when it’s the one power that she’s tried and tested, watching with rapt fascination as it tore down his defenses.

“I love that you’re strong,” she whispers, warm hands slanted against his cheeks. And perhaps she should have left the light on, because she’d give much to see his face right now. Would he be stunned or pleased or resentful – “Strong and a little wild and so easy on the eyes.”

There are other things that she doesn’t say, but these unspoken thoughts guide her every move.

_If I’m gonna die, shot and buried in the dead waters, or on a mountain somewhere... I might as well have had this first. He might as well have had me first. If I can have that, and know that he wanted me enough to risk it..._

Jon lowers his head, temple to temple and nose to nose. He tries to hold back a moment longer.

Sansa winds her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders. She tries to force him down.

It shouldn’t be enough – he’s too strong for her, every tense muscle under her hands tells her so. Yet all it takes is a single press of her small and stubborn hands, and a final whisper.

“Come, come for me, boy.”

 

 

 

 

Enough warmth to drown into. Jon’s long legs tangled with hers and his eyes ever watchful, even in this darkened room, even at this ungodly hour.

“You’re looking hard at me, for someone who can’t see a thing,” Jon says.

She might be naked under the itchy woolen blanket, her skin sticky and damp, her head a little blissed out. But the whispering reminds her of her childhood. Talking with Arya after lights out, telling her stories – the more dramatic and sinister the tale, the better. And it brings back the few sleepovers she’s been to; wrapping yourself in sleeping bags that still smell like a father or a brother’s hunting trip, alcohol and coffee and mustiness and some other, distant forest.

“Where’s that from?” she asks, pressing the tip of a finger to a spot below his collarbone. The skin there is rough to the touch, slightly wrinkled.

“9mm,” he says. “One beside it’s the same. Same gun.”

“Who shot you?”

Jon hesitates. Sansa taps her finger against the scars.

“When you ask me questions, I answer. I told you about Petyr. Because you asked about the dresses... And that night in the woods, when you asked about the car. I answered.”

Jon sighs. He drags her hand down, keeps it trapped inside his own.

“Men at the mill,” he says. “There was... A bunch of guys got fired for misconduct and... I told Mormont to hire people from the trailer park to replace them. The trailer park they razed to build the mill. The men who got fired... They were pissed.”

“Pissed,” Sansa repeats, incredulously. “They shot you.”

“Yeah. It’s an old story. Water under the bridges.”

Jon isn’t so old that anything in his past might qualify as an “old story.” At most, he’s been working at the mill for four, five years. The story can’t be older than that – it’s probably more recent, in fact.

“Turn around,” she says.

He makes a sound that she can’t interpret, amusement or annoyance or both, but he obeys her, and when she scoots over to the bedside table and flicks on the lamp, she sees that she’d guessed correctly, earlier on, despite the concealing darkness. Jon has another tattoo, a black crow etched along his side, the wings stretching out towards his back. The edges are dented, as if the bird was about to fall apart into a pile of feathers. Yet, despite the frayed outline, it looks frighteningly alive, with its beady black eye. Sansa strokes the feathers, feels Jon keep very still under her gentle touch.

"Where's that from?"

This time the answer comes more readily.

"First week in the mines. Pyp had a friend in town. Some artist guy. We all went. Pyp, Edd, Grenn..."

"Theon?"

"Yeah," Jon scoffs. "Yeah, Theon. We all got crows. He didn't."

Sansa reaches for the cord and turns the light back off. Shifting closer, she leans her forehead against his back, swaddles herself carefully in the blanket.

"Satisfied?" Jon asks. "You know me now?"

"I know you better."

There are several lifetimes on his body that she hasn't shared, Ygritte and the mines and the mill, and if she thinks too much about it she'll start to worry – that she's merely a moment, just like the rest, as fleeting maybe as his time in the mines had been.

But if that's so, she'll make sure to leave him a hell of a lasting memory.

 

 

 

 

"You're up," Sansa says, surprised.  
  
"You called," Margaery answers, as if that explains it all.

Sansa listens to her friend’s breathing, searching for words. Eventually, it's Margaery who speaks again, her tone faintly accusatory.

"You've been ignoring me."  
  
"I haven't! It's all been complicated and I..."

"Wait. I have to go out or I'll wake Tommen."

Sansa waits. Around her the yard is dark, though if she squints she can make out a slight difference between the black of the trees and the very dark grey of the sky above. Shaggydog is nowhere to be seen. If she had to venture a guess, she'd say he's in Rickon's room, probably at the foot of the boy's bed. A heavy, snoring blanket. Summer was sleeping on his rug when she came out, but he dragged himself up and came to reposition himself at her side, before falling asleep again. Sansa cards her fingers through his fur as she waits. With every exhale she sees her breath rise in small puffs of white smoke.

"Oh my god, it's fucking freezing," Margaery exclaims. "Are you outside too?"

"Yeah."  
  
"Girl, you're crazy. Okay, first... First things first."

Sansa can almost hear her teeth chattering. It's easy to picture Margaery outside in the narrow scrap of garden that a gardener fixes for her and Tommen once a week. Wrapped up in her short fur-lined jacket, stomping her booted feet on glinting ice.

"That thing with your brother," Margaery says. "It's probably not what you think."

"He was confused, you saw an opening, you thought it would be fun and then it wasn't?"

Margaery has a harsh little laugh. "Maybe it is what you think."

"I know you. I know Robb..." Sansa brushes her fingers over her jean-clad knee and begins to pull at a loose thread. "... I thought I knew Robb."

"He didn't make it easy for you, to be honest. I think he had this vision of himself, and it wasn't necessarily the right one."

"What was the right vision, then?"

She hears Margaery sigh, and then the distinct sound of her foot kicking something a few times, maybe a bush, because the thuds are followed by a flutter of snow.

"He wasn't as self-assured as he wanted people to think, and by the end he'd started to ask himself way too many questions. God, he talked a lot. He wasn't that much of a talker and the last few times I saw him... You know, maybe three, four weeks before he went missing?"

"He was already seeing Jeyne then," Sansa remarks, tone carefully neutral.

"Yeah. He talked about that, mostly.”

 _And yet,_ Sansa thinks. _You kept pretending you couldn’t remember her name. You and Theon, bitter liars._

“The first time, we ran into each other at a party,” Margaery says. “He was drunk. After that we hooked up a few times... He said I was easy to be with. No strings attached, and all that. I was bored and... Well. It's Robb. It was Robb. He's the equivalent of that cherry pie at Benjy's. You see it, you want it, it doesn't matter that you're on a diet or whatever."

"Did he know that the Freys and the Boltons were after him?"

"He brought the Frey thing on himself," Margaery says, and hastens to add, before Sansa can protest, "He did, Birdie. He said he'd marry one of Walder's girls, and then he didn't..."

"Because he met Jeyne," Sansa says. Under her fingers, the loose thread has become a hole and she keeps pulling, winding the strands around her index finger. "It happens. For the Freys it was all about the woods..."

"Of course it was," Margaery replies, patiently. "It's still a contract of sorts, and he broke it. He didn't give me a reason. I mean, he gave me several, but none of them made sense, you know? I've met that girl. He said she was the one, and all that. From what I know, she’s nothing special."

"She could have been special to Robb," Sansa snaps. "You can't know that. It's not because you fucked him a couple times that you get to decide who's right for him..."

"Theon," Margaery snaps back.

"Theon what?"

"The Freys wanted the woods and your brother wanted their river. That wedding agreement was a business deal, right from the start. Your brother didn't give a damn, said he was never gonna marry for love anyways, might as well do it for a piece of land. You tell me he'd have dropped that for sweet little Jeyne? You put her side by side with Greyjoy – the old Greyjoy. The one from before the Boltons and the drugs. She wouldn’t stand a chance. Oh, I'll tell you what happened. Your brother and Theon had a fight. Not uncommon. Robb got drunk, picked Jeyne up at some party, just like he picked me up. Found her easy to be with, like he did me. That’s no reason to..."

"You know what it's like, around here,” Sansa cuts in. “You can't... He couldn't just... Move in with Theon, or... Someone would have found out. Not just in the valley but... The fishermen would've drowned them both."

"You think I don't know that?" Margaery laughs. "You know we talked about it? He asked me about it. He asked me about Loras. That's why my brother left, remember? Or maybe you don't. It was easier for Loras, though. He didn't have anyone here. I mean, Renly’s from the valley, but they met in town. Your brother thought about leaving. And then he made that deal with the Freys... And he met Jeyne. It was like watching someone drown from a distance. You want to help, but you can only watch. From the shore, it seems like getting out of the water should be the easiest thing."

"Couldn't you have told me about this before?"

Perhaps the air got colder. Perhaps it's just the thought of Robb drowning while they all watch from the muddy bank. Margaery and Theon. Her mother, who must have insisted on that deal with the Freys. The Freys themselves. The Boltons, of course, who must have smelled blood from the top of their mountain, and come down running.

And Sansa herself, because she must have still been around when this all started, working her shifts at the _Mountain Lion_ , daydreaming of an escape and caring little about what was happening inside her handsome brother's head.

"I told you what I knew," Margaery says. "That if someone knew what had happened to Robb, it must be Jon or Theon, maybe the girl. I was always on the sidelines, Birdie. This whole thing was a tangle of knots to me. Still is."

Silence stretches between them. Sansa listens to Summer's regular breathing and to the creak of a shutter in the wind, somewhere at the back of the house.

"You did it, then," Margaery says at last. "He's in the wetlands, now."

"Yeah."

Sansa shuts her eyes, and it’s as if she was back there in the wet forest, with Ghost breathing beside her. Somewhere up ahead, Jon is leaning upon a shovel, considering the unbroken slab of ice that they'll have to break through to get to her brother's corpse.

"You told me to bury him in the mine," she says. "You said he was sweet on Jeyne. Was it a lie?"

"I didn't want him underwater," Margaery says. "I'm guessing that's not what you wanted either. Better get used to not getting what we want. Speaking of wanting things. Of men, of burials and whatever. Why are you calling me at three in the morning? Because when we did that at school, it used to be about boys. What's your boy trouble, Birdie?"

"I can't let him go against Ramsay," Sansa says, gaze darting back towards the screen door.

Before she continues, she gets up from the porch steps, as quietly as she can, and moves away from the house.

"I can't risk him like that," she whispers, in spite of the distance, as if Jon might overhear her.

"You don't really have a choice, though, do you? And he can defend himself. I don't just mean that your cousin can fight. I saw him stand his ground with Roose Bolton and he's got a head on his shoulders. I'd sure like to know how he managed to get the sheriff in his pocket."

"He's reckless."

"Not as much as you think."

"It’d be easier..."

Sansa sighs. Margaery doesn't say a thing, just waits patiently for her to finish, so that in the end she does have to speak, despite her reluctance to do so.

"It’d be easier if I gave in. Moved in with Jon and the boys would... the boys would come with us. Let the Boltons have my share of the woods."

"Oh, sweetheart."

Margaery's voice is so warm and understanding that Sansa has to wipe a hand across her eyes, relieved that no one’s here to see this display.

"I'll tell you what you already know," Margaery says. "Jon's house wasn't built for four. You can't give up your home. And you know they won't stop there. Give them an inch, they'll take a mile."

"I know. I needed to say it."

"I know, Birdie. I know."

"I just... I don't know how to keep him safe."

"You can't. That was the whole point, wasn't it? That he'd go up against them so you wouldn't have to?"

"I don't want that anymore," Sansa insists, stubborn. "I lost Robb, I can't lose him too. I just can't."

Margaery laughs. "Benjy's cherry pie. You've had a bite and now you wonder how you'll ever live without it. But you can. You could before and you can now. You'll figure it out. We'll figure it out."

"You don't understand."

"I understand that you were ready to give up your woods to protect him, Birdie. But I know you, and tomorrow you'll regret even bringing this up. In the end you'll do the right thing, and the right thing's putting yourself ahead of your timber wolf. Gee, I miss when your boy trouble was a guy with bad breath."

"I love you," Sansa says, wiping her eyes again.

"Yeah. Me too. Get some sleep, Birdie, okay?"

"Yeah. You too."

When Sansa turns around, she's only slightly surprised to see Jon on the porch, waiting patiently although he must be freezing. He didn't spare time to put on anything else than his jeans.

"What the fuck are you doing up?" he asks, as she runs back up the steps and into his arms.

She presses her cheek to his cold shoulder and feels him shiver.

"We'll have to talk about Robb at some point," she says.

"I ain’t the person you wanna ask. Day you're ready, you'll have to take a trip back to the wetlands."

"I'm ready," she assures him. "I don't think Theon is, though."

"You open those big blue eyes and he'll start talking," Jon says. "You look so much like Robb sometimes, it gives me the creeps. When you pull that face..."

"What face?" she asks, tilting her head back to look up at him.

"That face," Jon says, flicking her forehead. "Like you want something from me and you know I'm gonna give it to you. Your, 'bow before me, I'm a Stark' face."

"You think I'm too proud."  
  
Jon lowers his head, cold mouth brushing against her ear.  
  
"I do. Turns me on."  
  
Sansa shivers.  
  
"We should... We should go back to bed," she says. "Before you freeze to death."

"Hmm," Jon mumbles, the arm around her shoulders making her rock slightly against him. It reminds her of the night she went to join him in the woods, of shared cigarettes and stern promises.

"Here," she says, pressing the pack of cigarettes into his hand.

Jon laughs. It lasts a handful of seconds, but it's a real laugh, void of any bitterness or sarcasm.

"Theon teach you some tricks?" he asks, pulling one out.

Sansa hands him the matches and sets to shrugging off Robb's heavy jacket.

"Put something on, you idiot."

Jon catches her chin in his hand and turns her face towards him, thumb sliding along her smile. He huffs, but he accepts the jacket. Sansa watches as he shrugs it on, throat clenching at how perfectly it fits him.

Hugging her arms around her old sweater, she leans her cheek against the fur collar. Jon holds her there with a hand at the back of her head. He lights his cigarette one-handed, with the ease of a man used to having his other hand occupied – by a glass of whiskey or a steering wheel, by a dog or a bird-like girl.

The collar of the jacket still smells like Robb, Sansa realizes, nose prickling with the onset of the big crying fits of her childhood. But she can't cry before Jon. She didn’t in the wetlands and she won't now.

So she sniffs, just the once, and turns her head slightly to expose her mouth to the cold air and her nose to the dry tobacco smell, reminding herself of where she is and of who she's with.

Jon puts the cigarette against her lips and she allows herself this one, momentary delusion. That it'll always be like this, them sharing a cigarette on a cold night, surrounded by the sound of the wind through the trees, tired and sleepless and far too attuned for their own good.


	14. She-Wolf

When Sansa comes in, Cersei is waiting for her, although she’s trying to pretend this isn’t the case. At such an early hour, the bar is mostly empty. Cersei is standing beside the only client’s table, topping up his coffee as she listens to him rant about his baby daughter.

At first, Sansa suspects Cersei of wanting to make sure that she shows up on time, in keeping with her warnings the day before. And maybe that’s true to some extent, but it’s not the only thing on her mind, because by the time Sansa comes back from the kitchen, Cersei’s retreated behind the bar and poured two shots of rum.

“This a habit, now?” Sansa asks, pulling out one of the bar stools.

“I have this smuggled in from the south,” Cersei says, turning the bottle over in her hand. “It’s none of that cat’s piss that I serve the customers... No offense,” she adds, glancing towards the lonely trucker in the puffer jacket, with his bald patch that glints under the neon light.

“What’s the occasion?” the trucker asks.

Cersei’s fingers tap against the counter as she thinks this over. In the end she pulls out a third glass.

“A toast,” she says.

Cersei’s rarely if ever careless about her appearance, but she’s made even more of an effort today. Her blond hair is pulled up into an elaborate crown at the back of her head, and she’s wearing a dark dress that hugs her slender figure. Whenever she moves, the sheer fabric of the sleeves flies around her elbows, displaying just the right amount of smooth, pale skin.

Her brother must have paid her a visit – her handsome twin, and not Shae’s Tyrion, for whom Cersei would never go to such lengths.

The trucker joins them at the bar. His brown eyes glide from the bottle to the glass to Cersei’s bare forearms to Sansa’s knees and back to the glass. He’s smiling a little to himself. Sansa can’t really hold it against him. Judging by the bags under his eyes, he must have been driving through the night.

“Who or what are we toasting to?” the trucker asks.

Cersei glances at Sansa. “Dear old Walder,” she says. “God rest his soul.”

“Rest in peace,” the trucker agrees, though it’s obvious he’s got no idea who they’re talking about.

Sansa stares at Cersei.

“Walder Frey?” she says.

“A pillar of the community,” Cersei muses, as she pushes Sansa’s shot glass across the counter. “Doting father, doting grandfather. He will be missed.”

Sansa doubts there’s a single person in the valley who’ll miss Walder Frey, least of all his own children. They’ll be quick to split the old man’s lands, and to fight over who’ll inherit the big power plant that provides half the valley with electricity. And it’s not even that Frey’s children are greedy and ungrateful, though Sansa strongly suspects that quite a few of them are.

Frey was also a hell of an unsavory character.

Sansa remembers him from his daughter's wedding to Roose Bolton. The old man had sat at the middle of a long trestle table, pale eyes never straying far from the bride and groom. He had long lanky hair, of a green-grey-brown color like the surface of one of the sloughs in the wetlands, and a long and narrow face, wrinkled like an old apple. Despite the onset of rheumatisms, there was still strength left in his claw-like hands. He used it to grip his wife’s wrist. He’d remarried a few months before his daughter, to yet another young woman from the next valley over. Every so often the girl would struggle within his grip and he’d sit her back down with a quick pull of a venous hand.

Robb had caught her looking and he'd whispered, "Don't ever marry a Frey, yeah? I think they're half-fish, half-fried."

It'd taken her a few seconds to understand that he meant "fried" by their electrical plant, rather than in a frying pan, and she'd laughed, and it'd made Robb smile.

Walder Frey used to smile a lot. The corners of his lips climbed higher than they should have and revealed gaps among his broken brown teeth.

_Did he smile, when he forced Robb to sign that will?_

"Death's always so complicated," the trucker notes, as he drops a bill on the counter between them.

"You don't say," Cersei says, with a sly smile of her own.

As soon as the man has left, she leans towards Sansa, as if someone in the deserted bar might overhear.

"Isn't it curious, how problems sometimes solve themselves?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Sansa says, as she drains what's left of her rum. She can feel her eyes water. When Cersei said it was illegal, she'd assumed it meant she'd got a fair cut on the price of the bottle. In fact it's likely that the drink itself has been outlawed, which is somewhat impressive considering the kind of stomach-churning alcohol that people make around here.

"Where did you get this?" she sputters.

"The fishermen," Cersei says. "Euron Greyjoy owed me a favour. But don't think you'll change the subject so easily."

"Am I supposed to cry over Frey's death? I don't have tears for my own kin."  
  
She closes her hand around the shot glass, breathing out slowly through clenched teeth.  
  
"You must be relieved that he's dead," Cersei notes.  
  
"I don't wish death on anyone," Sansa lies.  
  
_Does Jon know, already? Will he be relieved, or satisfied?_  
  
The moment the thought springs to her mind she discards it. Jon won't be satisfied. It's Ramsay that he's worried about, Ramsay that he's set his sights on. The Freys' grudge with the Starks ended with Robb's death, and from the start, Jon has only intervened when someone posed a threat to her.

_Well, I'm glad the old fucker's dead._

This surge of ferocious glee is difficult to hide from Cersei, whose searching stare follows her all the way to the kitchen, but Sansa succeeds in keeping a straight face until the fire exit has banged shut behind her. She offers the thin sickle of her smile to the cold morning air and to the vanishing stars, and to Ghost, who trots up to her on silent paws, head lifted towards her welcoming hand.

 

 

She learns a little more during the day. Lancel tells her how Walder went to visit one of his sons about some business matter. How he decided, rather unwisely, to drive back at night.

"My cousin says it was one of his sons drove the car. Stev, I think. Old Walder's hands'd started to shake, he wasn't driving anymore."

"That motorcycle came too hard round the bend," she hears a trucker say, later that morning. She doesn't know the man, but he's talking to Meryn Trant, and she's familiar enough with Trant. Familiar enough with his beefy hands, at any rate, from that time he'd hit her on Joffrey's orders.

"Cold night," a third man says. "Lots of ice on the road."

"Frey's boy tried to avoid it," Pycelle tells her, as he chews on his slippery fries. The old man spends so much time in here drinking their diluted coffee that his beard is stained yellow round the mouth. "Drove off the road. River was frozen, but the car went straight in."

And the last she hears from Petyr, when he calls her during her lunch break.

"They pulled them both out. The son's in hospital and in pretty bad shape. Hypothermia. Frey himself had drowned a while before the ambulance arrived."

A fitting end, in Sansa's opinion. It allows her to envision her brother dragging the old man down, bony white hands fisted around Frey’s winter jacket until his lungs have filled up with water and muck.

"Is this something you need help with?" Petyr asks.

"Help with?" Sansa repeats, confused, as she accepts the plate Lancel is handing her. Potato salad. Lately, he's begun to experiment, though the range of products at his disposal does tend to limit his creativity.

"They're still looking for the biker," Petyr says. "They're treating it like a hit and run." It takes a moment for his meaning to sink in.

"You think I had him..." Sansa glances towards Lancel, who appears to be busy rinsing a stack of plates. She lowers her voice. "You think I had something to do with this?"

"I'm simply asking if this is a matter you need my help with."

"No," she snaps, faster, perhaps, than she should.

What kind of help is he offering? she wonders. Legal advice, maybe. The kind that comes with bribes and subtle threats. Though if he could solve legal trouble, she wouldn't have to worry about the will.

Of course it's a matter of spheres of influence as well. What Petyr can do in the city, he can't necessarily do where the city gives place to the dead old mountains.

"How have you been?" he asks. "The Sansa I know is careful. You're being careful, my dear, aren't you?"

She's about to snap at him again when she thinks better of it. Whatever he intended to do to help her, she doesn't doubt he'd have gone through with it. There'd have been a price to pay, but it still makes him a valuable asset.

"I'm being careful," she says. "I hope you're okay too."

She can almost hear his smile. He must be sitting in his office, wearing one of the nice suits that he always wore to work. Trimmed moustache and gelled hair, dark blue eyes shrewd as he looks out the window – at the window or at his own reflection, it's hard to say. Petyr likes to be aware of things, which includes his own weaknesses and flaws.

He'll be talking to her and thinking, _I have her where I want her,_ but also, _Remember that the boy is younger and twice as wild as her. It's something you can use against him, but it could still play against you._

He shouldn't have taught her to read him like this.

"I'm relieved to know we're both doing well," he says. "I'll talk to you soon, Sansa."

"You have a good day."

She hangs up. Lancel's eyes dart towards her.

"That Snow?" he asks.

Sansa glances at him, surprised. Lancel looks down at the sink. The dirty dishwater comes up to his elbows, colored orange like the layer of grease under his tasteless burgers.

"You be careful," he mutters. "You'd do better to get married."

Perhaps it’s that she’s heard that particular piece of advice way too often over the past week, but she can’t find it in herself to be calm or polite about it.

"You don't see me shoving my morals down your throat."

"That's not... I meant, they're gonna get you otherwise. The Boltons or..." His blue eyes flick over to the door. "Or my cousin. She's got it in her head that you and Tyrion'd make a good match. All of them drinks she keeps pouring for you... She doesn't want to be your friend. And it ain't good for you. A young girl like you, you shouldn't be lying with..."

"Leave it. You were doing so well, let's not ruin it, yeah? Thanks for the salad."

She drops the plate in the sink. Her gratitude doesn't extent so far that she doesn’t feel pleased when it splashes his front.

By four she's starting to look forward to Shae coming in. By five, she's almost run out of patience. Aside from the trucker at table 8 who's on his ninth whiskey and whom she knows they'll have to have removed by one of the sheriff' deputies before he can punch someone, there's a family of four by the restroom that's about the rudest she's ever met. The mother has her send back her omelet three times and on the last occasion, she makes a nasty comment about Sansa's hair. The father and son keep ogling her and the girl has taken to singing along to the karaoke machine, in between taking big slurps of her milkshake.

Upon receiving the third rejected omelet, Lancel frowns and deems the lot of them "the devil's spawn", which goes some way towards redeeming him in Sansa's eyes.

By five thirty, she’s got the woman whining about dry omelets on one side and the trucker loudly calling for another drink on the other. He starts by banging his fist on the table and when that fails to produce any result, he ascends to a discordant hooting.

The grim satisfaction that Sansa had felt upon hearing about Walder Frey's demise has long since given way to exhaustion and a bone-deep yearning for a bed, any bed, as long as it's wide enough for her and Jon to lie in together.

"... and I'd order a salad, except that I've no idea what a salad'd look like in a place like this, how hard can it be to cook an egg, if your cook can't do that..."

The bar is almost full at this hour. With the end of the weekend, people have started to drive home. It takes a lull in the conversations for Sansa to notice that the ruckus is missing its most vocal contributor.

The drunken trucker is still sitting where she left him, rubbing his empty glass between two big brown hands. Head ducked between his shoulders, the collar of his plaid shirt upturned on one side as if he's been lifted a few inches off his seat by a reproving hand, he looks like a scolded dog, the tapping of his foot much like the worried beating of a tail.

She finds Jon two tables away, jacket thrown over the back of a chair, long legs tucked at an odd angle because they won't fit under the table.

"I'll get you a salad," she tells the woman, the smile springing unbidden to her lips.

She promptly moves away from the family, smile turning into a wince as her quick steps pull on her bruised belly. Jon leans back as she approaches and she plants a kiss upon his brow, her fingers tugging the soft curls at his nape.

"How was work?"

"Long," Jon says, grey eyes shining with amusement. "Should have slept more."

"Yeah? Tonight, then."

"Hmm."

His knuckles brush against her knee. She grasps his fingers without quite thinking about it, clutches his cold hand in her warm one.

"Not tonight," Jon says. "I’ll keep watch.”

"The dogs can keep watch."

They smile at each other. She won't say it, but she's quite sure it's the first time she's ever seen him look anything but tense. Even as they danced, there'd been a reckless energy to his steps. She'd begun to think him a nervous creature, of the kind that never settles for more than a few seconds at a time. But despite the strain of the past week, he looks lazy and content. He’d almost seem mischievous, if there wasn’t always that sadness, too, like his grey eyes can see beyond what other men can see, like he’s had a glimpse of his own death and it’s still haunting him.

She has to refrain from giving him another kiss. Later, she tells herself. As soon as Shae comes in, they can go back to his truck and she can kiss him there, and she won't have to endure the looks of the other patrons, the whispers that she can hear even beneath the jittery crooning of the jukebox and the louder ebb and flow of a dozen conversations.

_... Starks... Lose the house... Mad dog... Selling herself._

"Sansa Stark!"

She jolts, letting go of Jon's hand. A single backwards glance is enough to assess Cersei's mood. Foul, worse than foul – belligerent.

"One whiskey, coming up," Sansa says, with a stilted smile.  
  
Jon straightens up and as she turns away she feels the soft press of his hand against her lower back. _Go,_ that touch seems to say. _I'll be here when you come back.  
_  
Cersei's eyes remain on her for the half hour that follows, and by the time Shae arrives, Sansa is ready to lift the closest pint and throw its contents in her face.

"I'm sorry, Birdie! I had a rough night... And the roads are just _wild_ today. Lots of ice, it felt like driving across a pond. I'll make it up to you soon, okay?"

She rushes in before Sansa can say anything, winding an arm around her neck and kissing her on both cheeks.

Above Shae’s shoulder, Sansa can see Jon talking to some man she doesn't know. A bearded guy in a cap, rather indistinguishable from the other patrons. Probably a worker from the mill. Jon sets down his foggy glass and follows the man, reaching behind him for his cigarettes.

"Try to come in on time tomorrow," Sansa tells Shae, without much hope that she’ll be listened to.

Whatever Shae says next, Sansa doesn’t hear it. She hasn't missed the tightening in Jon's shoulders, nor the way he signaled to her as he went through the door. The gesture is old, dating back to when they first began training the dogs, out back of the house. They used to have many such tricks.

_Hand flat above the ground, stand down, Grey Wind. Stand down, boy._

Grey Wind hadn't been the first one to heed that order. Lady had beaten him to it, ever the sweetest, most obedient of dogs.

"Are you alright?" Shae asks.

There was another signal, one that Sansa never got to use with Lady. _I don't want her to attack anyone_ , she'd said, stubborn, as the others pointed two fingers to the ground. Like finger guns, down and up, down and up.

That's the sign Jon makes as he goes through the door, as if – at the last possible second – self-preservation had won over caution.

 

 

Theon had grabbed Robb around the neck. The mock attack looked so real that Sansa had stumbled back a few steps, even as Arya jumped to her feet, ready to fly to her brother's help.

And Robb had pointed two fingers to the ground and moved his hand up and down, twice, and he’d choked out, _Go for the throat, Grey Wind. Go for the throat._

Stupid boys. Robb had had to cover Theon with his own body for the dog to back down. Grey Wind didn't quite draw blood, but Theon bore the marks for weeks. As far as she knows, none of them ever used that signal after that. Jon hadn't even been in the clearing with them that day.

And yet, the message is unmistakable. _Go for the throat._

 

 

Night has fallen when Sansa steps outside the _Mountain Lion_ , paying little attention to the door that bangs shut behind her. If she'd wanted to be discrete, she'd have gone through the kitchen. From the moment she reached under the counter, she knew that her exit wouldn't go unnoticed. Not by Cersei, not by anyone else.

She makes out five silhouettes in the parking lot. Three men. Jon. Ramsay.

Ghost is nowhere to be seen.

At first glance, Ramsay's men are the most immediate threat. Jon is trying to hold them off when she comes out. He lands a punch against a man in a brown puffed jacket and then ducks under a second man's arm, but in doing so he fails to see the guy’s extended foot. The man doesn’t even wait until Jon has hit the ground to kick him, hard, in the stomach.

"Ramsay," she calls, though she knows that he's seen her. He had his eye on the door.

The call does alert the men to her presence, however, and the one standing above Jon freezes, just as his foot was about to collide with Jon's bleeding face. His muddy boot sways slightly as he tries to regain his balance.

"You're gonna shoot that?" Ramsay asks, turning towards her and smiling wide, as if the very thought delights him.

Sansa's never used a pump-action before, but she's seen Cersei do so. A first time, to quell a bar fight before it could escalate beyond the first sloppy punch. And a second, when she’d shot a few shells to scare off a black bear clawing at a garbage bag.

It’s simple enough: push the forend, forwards and back. Pull the trigger.

She aims for a spot to the left of Ramsay’s feet. The detonation resonates through the parking lot and the men around Jon jump. Jon himself ducks his head on instinct, throwing his arms up to cover his face.

Ramsay, however – he barely winces. He looks at his feet with naked interest, and at the hole that the shell has made in the thick crust of snow.

“Go,” Sansa tells him as she quickly pumps the gun again. This time, she aims for his heart.

“That doesn’t look very fair to me,” Ramsay remarks. “We came unarmed. Now, if you want to bring guns into this...”

Shooting him wouldn’t be worth the trouble, Sansa tells herself. And yet. It’s so tempting, to think that the fear would vanish the moment he does, like a puff of smoke. No more of his breathing down her neck, no more of these haggard blue eyes. She might even get to kick his bloody corpse before they haul her away. _That’s for my brother, that’s for taunting me about Robb, you son of a bitch._

"Go," she says again, louder.

Slowly, Ramsay takes a step back. He keeps looking at her, his smile at odds with the seriousness of his eyes, as if his amusement had been soured, the threat finally beginning to dawn on him.

He takes another step, positioning his foot with deliberate care on the frozen ground, and Sansa considers screaming at him; maybe pulling the trigger again. This time, she'd aim for his foot, and she might or might not miss.

Ramsay is not as swift as a squirrel, after all, nor is he as light-footed as a deer.

No, every one of his steps feels as if he's dragging the whole mountain along with him, rocks and trees and shifting ice. He might as well be pulling the ground from under her feet. And maybe she’d have let herself be hypnotized, but everything around her erupts into sound and motion, all at once, before she can do much more than tighten her grip on the gun.

Jon springs onto one of the men, moving so fast that for a few dizzying seconds she doesn't understand how he came to be up and the man came to be sprawled on the ground, clutching his knee and howling in pain.

In the distance, what she'd taken to be a mere ringing in her ears begins to grow louder and louder. A siren.

"The sheriff," the remaining guy warns, because the other has thrown himself at Jon and they've rolled onto the ground, grappling like a pair of dogs.

Ramsay emits a low, continuous whistle.

In an instant the man who'd attacked Jon jerks up. He tries to pull away, helped by the other two. It's not the men that Ramsay was calling, however, and before the police car can drown out all other sounds in the valley, Sansa hears them – the quick skidding of paws over the ice, the low barking, sharp and fast as the dogs run out of the copse of trees and towards their master. One of them is missing an ear and they’re trailing blood upon the snow.

"This ain't over," Ramsay calls back to her as he walks towards his car, his steps much quicker now. “If I want to have you, there ain't no shotgun can keep you safe. No gun, no dog, no man, even if the man's a son of a dog or a son of a gun. I'll see you around, Shotgun Jon."

Ramsay's truck narrowly avoids the sheriff's car on its way out of the lot.

Jon limps over to Sansa. He has to use both hands to get her to lower the shotgun. Meanwhile she stares, wide-eyed, at his face. His nose and mouth and beard are caked with blood and there's a gash above his eye that's bleeding freely.

"Jon."

"I'm fine."

He pulls the shotgun from her hands and spares the time for a hard-mouthed kiss that leaves her weak in the legs.

"I'll deal with Stannis,” he says. “Go look for Ghost. If he's..."

Still a little dazed, Sansa touches her fingers to her mouth. She pulls them back wet and slippery, stained with his blood.

Behind her, the door of the _Mountain Lion_ bangs shut, almost in unison with the door of the sheriff's car.

"I can't have this sort of _chaos_ at my bar!" Cersei shouts.  
  
In the poor light of the parking lot, Stannis’ gaunt face looks even sharper.

He casts a stern glance at the shotgun.

Jon lays it down without waiting to be asked, and Cersei doesn't waste any time reclaiming it, snatching it from the ground and giving Jon the kind of glare she usually reserves for her brother Tyrion or, on occasion, for Margaery.

"If I see you around here again, Snow, you can be sure I'll be using that against you." She rounds on Sansa so fast that her blond braid whips Jon's chest. "That's true for you as well, Birdie. You're fired."

Sansa takes a step towards Cersei, propelled forwards perhaps by the momentum of the aborted confrontation with Ramsay. She's held her tongue often enough in Cersei's presence. Now, at last, it seems like this might be the time to give her a taste of her own medicine. To taunt her or slap her or even bite her, and to shove that belittling nickname back inside her mouth.

Jon's hand closes around her shoulder in a vice-like grip. "Ghost," he says.

For a second she almost snaps at him, but she sees something in his face that holds her back. Fear, worry. She nods quickly and hurries off in the direction the dogs came from, following their bloody paw prints towards the trees along the edge of the lot.

When she glances back towards the bar the three of them haven’t moved, staring each other down in tense silence: Cersei with the gun gripped tight in her pale hands, the gauzy fabric of her sleeves swaying gently in the wind, Stannis with his feet apart, steadfast as a rock, and Jon like the devil on both their shoulders, a tall, bloody shadow standing slightly to the side, almost out of reach of the closest lamp, as if the darkness was pulling at his sleeves.

The ground begins to rise where the asphalt stops. Sansa picks her way among wet stones and scrawny bushes, trying not to lose the tracks.

“Ghost? Ghost!”

Her voice echoes among the trees. For sure, she’s far from being the only living thing in these woods. She hears feet flying over ground and a tap, tap, tap against wood, which could be a beak or claws or drops of water. If she strains her ear, she can also make out the crackling and the rustle of leaves as something rushes by, a few bushes off but always out of her reach.

But there’s no saying if any of this is Ghost, and the uncertainty gnaws at her.

The further she goes, the less light there is. Aside from the blood, however, there are other trails that she can follow. Trampled bushes and broken twigs, their jagged ends catching against her sleeve as she pushes through a dog-sized opening in the undergrowth.

“Ghost!”

She tears herself from yet another broken branch and takes a second to catch her breath, hand hovering over her aching ribs. When she starts again, it’s at a more cautious pace. She won’t dare face it just yet, but it’s possible that she might have lost the dogs’ tracks.

 _"Last night my lover promised me... to take me across the deep blue sea..."_ And under her breath, with every few lines of the tune, she mutters, “be alive, be alive, be alive.”

As a pup, Ghost had been silent and shy, much like Jon was silent and shy. A ball of white fluff, not as fast as Shaggydog and Nymeria, not as strong as Grey Wind and not as perceptive and ever-alert as Summer, who could sense trouble and would start barking before any of the others did.

No, Ghost had been as quiet as Lady, and he'd followed Jon everywhere like a stubborn shadow, much like Lady did her.

Back then she'd have scoffed if anyone had told her Jon and her were alike in some ways. But she'd liked Ghost, even then. Once they'd all gone swimming in the river and the white pup fell in. He was still small, small enough that she could gather him in her arms, and she’d lifted him out of the river and clutched him to her narrow chest.

 _Let him swim,_ Robb had said.

Sansa had ignored him, too busy laughing as the pup licked her face with its little pink tongue.

" _And now he's gone and left me alone, an orphan girl without a home..._ Ghost! Ghost!"

The cold winds wrap around her call, stretching it out, until it seems like the forest is singing around her, hollow and high, and the noise nearly drowns out the answering bark.

"Ghost!"

Sansa scrambles down the pile of rocks she'd been climbing upon, holding on to her stomach with one hand, wishing the pain would just vanish and allow her to run. Instead she has to hobble, going back a few feet and then diving into the bushes.

That's where she finds Ghost, struggling against the thorns and the rope around his neck.

"Stop," Sansa says.

He obeys her immediately, going still except for his tail that keeps nervously beating the ground, like the last ripple at the surface of a lake.

"Good," she whispers. "Good boy. Don't move. I'll get you out."

She pulls out her knife. The rope is a manner of noose. There's little doubt as to who could have devised it. From the moment it got caught in the thorn-bush, Ghost will have been unable to fight against it without pulling it tighter around his neck.

She slides the blade under the noose. The rope is thick and strong, and it takes a while before it gives and Ghost can shake himself free. Sansa pockets her knife and lets the dog lick her face while she runs her hands over his back and legs, checking for other wounds.

"Fought them off, didn't you?” she babbles, as she peppers his back with kisses, her hands clutching his fur. “Oh, I love you, I love you so much. Don’t you go throwing yourself at danger again, okay? Don’t do this to me again. You scared me half to death.”

Of course, Ghost did not willingly seek trouble; in fact, she’s well aware that it’s not really Ghost that she’s talking to. As she speaks she thinks of the parking lot, not of the steep mountain slope, and it’s Jon’s face that she sees. The downward slant of his full mouth and that look of concern, even as he blinked the blood out of his eyes.

 

 

When she returns to the parking lot, Jon and the sheriff have somehow managed to get rid of Cersei. Sansa makes to join them, but she’s barely stepped onto the asphalt that Shae slips out the kitchen door.

“Sansa!”

Shae has to stand on tiptoe to reach around Sansa’s neck. Sansa accepts the hug, her eyes quickly drifting back to the two men. She sees Jon go down on one knee to greet Ghost, wrapping his hands around the dogs’ ears and giving his head an affectionate shake. There’s a playfulness to it, but Jon’s relief is obvious. Above him, Stannis Baratheon is still talking. He’s one of these people who don’t gesture as they speak, and so it’s hard to infer much from his posture. It doesn’t look as if he’s about to arrest Jon, though.

“He was already on his way when I called. He must have been keeping an eye on the Boltons. You don’t mind that I called him, though, do you?”

Sansa gives Shae’s back an awkward rub. Her way of saying, _No, I don’t_ , and maybe _Thank you_. There’s no saying how things might have turned out if Stannis hadn’t showed up.

Then again, there’s no saying what will happen now that he has.

“I’ll go talk to them.”

“Alright. I’ll go back before Cersei wrings my neck. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yes. No. Cersei fired me.”

“What!” Shae gives an exaggerated sigh. “That’s such bullshit. Just give it a few days. She’ll change her mind.”

“I’m meeting with Brienne tomorrow, anyways.” “Right. To go see your cousin.”

“My cousin, yeah,” Sansa agrees distractedly.

Stannis’ piercing gaze alights on Sansa. She meets his eye, mouth set in as firm a line as his own. And eventually, finally, he relents. Still frowning, he tips his hat to her, and heads off towards his car.

 

 

In the truck, she rips apart a faded bandana and holds a balled up strip of cloth against the gash in Jon’s temple. Whenever her grip slackens she can feel his blood trickling down her wrist.

“Shouldn’t I be driving?”  
  
"I'm fine," Jon says, or lies. "Thank you. For the dog".

Sansa remembers his gesture of warning inside the bar. _Go for the throat._ It's likely he's not merely thanking her for Ghost.

"Why did you go? What did they say, to make you go?"  
  
"Said he wanted to talk about a new machine for the mill," Jon says. "I didn't think it through."

 _Of course you didn't._ She's not sure she believes him. He could be telling the truth, but it's more likely that he's lying. Had they threatened Ghost, had they threatened her? It might not even have been an elaborate lie. Jon would have gone. Anyone else would have thought that it was pointless, that the Boltons would have long killed the dog. Not Jon. As long as there was a chance, he'd have rushed out, and she's lucky he remembered that he had an ally in the bar.

"What about the sheriff?" she asks.

"Don't worry about Stannis. He wants to get along with me," Jon says, keeping his eyes on the dark road.

"Why?"  
  
Jon hesitates. She can almost see him fight his dogged instinct for secrecy.

"Because I carry the voices of the men at the mill. I have friends at the mine too. It's his idea of a respectable town – you start by straightening out the one area and you move on. You set an example to follow. Stannis wants to use me."

“Use you... To make the town respectable. By closing his eyes when we threaten to shoot people.”

“He’s not above lighting a few fires if it smokes out the foxes.”

“Okay,” Sansa says, because truth be told, this revelation about Stannis’ character doesn’t surprise her. To some extent, it’s even reassuring. She’s always found Davos’ praise of Stannis difficult to believe. It makes more sense to view him as a man who refuses to admit his own flaws than as an incorruptible force of change for the valley.

“Don’t worry about Cersei,” Jon says. “I’ll get you a job at the mill.”  
  
“You’ll get me a job. What, chopping wood? I don’t know how to use any of that machinery.”

Ygritte knew. Jon’s girl worked at the mill for as long as Sansa can remember. She used to think it must be nice. Getting up at the same time, going to work together and coming back together. She’s not sure how to feel about Jon suggesting that for her. Pleased, that he’d want her around all day.

Worried, that he’s trying to turn her into a girl she’s not.

“Mormont’s had me doing the accounts on top of the rest,” Jon says. “He could use someone for that, full time, and you can count, can’t you? Pay’s decent. Won’t sustain a family of three, but if we add mine...”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

Jon turns his head slightly towards her, cheek tilted towards her hand. The white of his eye stands out in a frightening way with all the blood around it.

“Who said anything about asking? I’m offering.”

“Because I need it,” she says, remembering his talk with Dany. Something about how he’d be a Stark if the Starks needed him and a Targaryen if Dany was in trouble.

“Yeah. No use fighting for that house if you can’t pay for it.”  
  
“Whatever you give, I’ll pay you back.”  
  
Jon pulls the blood-soaked kerchief from her fingers and lets it drop at her feet. He takes her hand.

“You don’t owe me a thing.” He returns his eyes to the road but keeps a hold of her hand, calloused thumb rubbing soothing circles into her palm. “What happened at the bar... You did good back there. It’d have been a world of trouble for us both if you hadn’t come out when you did.”

Sansa would say something – about how Ramsay wouldn’t have attacked Jon if it hadn’t been for her, about how there’s hardly any point in saving him if the next thing he does is run into trouble, and she can tell he’s got trouble on his mind. The blows haven’t incapacitated him; if anything, they’ve made him more eager to let rip at Ramsay.

But the words die on her lips as the truck swerves into the courtyard. For there’s a familiar silhouette sitting on the porch, her blonde hair almost white in the moonlight.


	15. Stitches

Jon’s hand falls from hers. 

“She’ll have heard about the fight,” he says, as he cuts off the ignition.

The house is lit, the door ajar. It feels like a repeat of the other night, except this time Dany is wearing a denim skirt, and there’s a glass of orange juice by her side, no doubt deposited here by a considerate Bran.

Dany rises when Jon emerges from the car. She starts running when she catches a glimpse of the blood on his face.

“I’m fine,” Jon says, gently pushing down her hand.

“If he keeps coming at you, we should...”

“Yeah. But I can’t just shoot him. Gave my word to Stannis. It’d be hell trying to cover it up.”

“I can’t believe they attacked you.”

Dany’s murmuring now, as if she were trying to keep Sansa out of the conversation.

Sansa doesn’t intend to make it easy for her. Jon hasn’t asked her to go in and so she’ll stay, painful as it might be to watch this little reunion unfold.

“Is it enough?” Jon asks.

“Enough for what?”

“Enough that you’ll help me,” Jon says, hands coming up to frame her face.

Dany’s delicate features harden.

“She teach you that?” she asks, her tone contemptuous. “How to twist people around? Is that how she lured you in?”

“Is it working?” Jon asks, with a rueful smile. This time Sansa does step back, retreating towards the well-lit porch; wishing she could block her ears.

“What do you need?” Dany asks.

Jon lets go of her, unless it’s her who moves away. She’s shorter than him but there’s enough steel in her spine that it barely shows.

“Can you get me a fisherman?” Jon says. “You’ve had business with Asha Greyjoy in the past. How are you two acquainted? Enough that she’d drive to my house right now if you asked?”

“For me? Maybe not,” Dany shrugs. “But for you, maybe. Have you heard what the Bolton son did to her brother? It’s a wonder you found a piece of him to bring back. She’ll be grateful for that. I’ll get her for you.”

Dany steals a glance at Sansa before she rises on tiptoe to give Jon a kiss. From a few feet away it’s hard to tell if she kissed his bloody cheek of his surly mouth.

“You be careful,” Jon tells her.

Dany waves the warning away. And because Jon watches her leave, Sansa has to as well, counting each of Dany’s determined steps on the way to her sleek little sports car. A wedding present, if Sansa remembers well. There’d been talk about how much it’d cost, around the time Dany got married. And then the talk turned into stories about who’d been allowed to drive the speedster.

Maybe Jon took a spin. Maybe more than one.  
  
“What business do you have with Asha Greyjoy?” she asks.  
  
Jon doesn’t turn back but she sees him round his shoulders, like he’s preparing for a fight.  
  
“You wanted my help. Let me deal with this. It’s better if you...”  
  
“You’ll share your plans with her, and not with me.”  
  
He casts her a glance over his shoulder and it’s infuriatingly soft, despite the blood and the bruises.

“I ain't telling you because you wouldn’t approve.”

“Of you killing Ramsay? You’re damn right, I wouldn’t. Not tonight and not tomorrow. Can’t you see? He wants us to make a mistake. That’s why he attacked you. You might think you’ve got Stannis in your pocket...”

"What would you do?" Jon asks. "If you have a better idea, I'll listen."

"A week ago, you told me to wait."

"A week ago, Ramsay wasn't seeking you out and beating us up. It'll get worse, not better. And with Frey gone, Ramsay's the one loose end. Roose won’t come after you. He's not stupid. He knows he can't use that will..."

_Unless he can prove that Robb's dead. Unless they did keep something of Robb's. And if so, how do I get it back?_

"If you kill Ramsay, Roose will come after you," she says, trying to keep a steady voice. The rest of the adrenaline from the parking lot merges with the sudden crippling fear that Jon will get himself killed and it makes her heart beat loudly in her ears.

"If I don't kill Ramsay, Ramsay will kill me," Jon says simply. "And when he has, maybe you'll manage to get him before he gets you. But I doubt it. And if you think I'm going to give him a chance to get his hands on you..."

"It's not you killing him that I've got a problem with! It's how obvious it'll be that it was you who did it! Maybe if it was self-defense... But Roose won't believe you if you say you shot him in self- defense. Maybe... If he comes after me again, with a gun this time... Maybe Roose would believe that. He'd have to. And it'd be an eye for an eye, payback for Robb. He's got to have enough of a code..."

"A code?" Jon laughs. "Sansa. Roose Bolton doesn't have a code."

"We can't take on all the Boltons. It's not... I just... I just want them to leave me alone."

"I'll make sure they do.”

A week ago, she might have found this statement reassuring, but by now she's seen enough that she can't hear it as anything but a death sentence.

Jon's, for sure. Maybe hers too.

"I'll go talk to Asha," Jon says. "She'll know where Ramsay does his cooking and when. Get some sleep. Stannis is keeping an eye out tonight, you'll be fine."

"If you think I'm letting you do this..."

"You don't have a choice, though, do you? You can't risk yourself, because then what’s gonna happen to the house and the kids? And if you think I'm gonna wait until Ramsay comes at you with a loaded gun..."

 _There has to be something,_ Sansa thinks, stubbornly. _There has to be something I can do_.

"Come in," she says. "I'm not letting you leave with a bloody face."

Jon glances back towards the truck and she swallows hard past the lump in her throat. "Jon."

He gives her another one of his awkward smiles. "Alright."

Sansa heads quickly through the door, wishing to hide her relief. In the living room, however, she comes face to face with her brothers. She should have expected as much - all the lights were on, Bran was undeniably there to receive Dany and they must have been worried about her late return. And yet, she's been so preoccupied with Jon and Ramsay that she didn't think to check in on them before having it out with Jon - and she didn't think to make sure they weren't in the room before she let Jon in.

"Does it hurt?" Rickon asks.

"Was it the Freys?"

"No," Sansa tells Bran, bending over to snatch Rickon before he can entangle himself in Jon's legs. "Jon will be fine..."

"Hurts like hell," Jon tells Rickon, dropping a bloody hand to the boy's head as he makes his way to the bathroom.

Rickon follows him with a look of awestruck wonder that has Sansa grind her teeth in desperation.

"Can you keep your brother away from the bathroom?" she asks Bran, as she makes to go after Jon.

"Can you tell me what's going on?" Bran retaliates, and beneath his usual stern composure there's something else, a hint of straight-faced sarcasm. Jon, bleeding onto him.

Sansa mutters a curse and hurries over to the bathroom. There she finds Jon sitting on the edge of the old bathtub, considering a bottle of pills that he must have filched from her mother's cabinet. The bathroom wasn't made to hold four people - it was hardly made to be a bathroom. The washing machine takes up most of the space that isn't used up by the tub and sink, and with his legs stretched out before him, Jon has his feet out the door.

Sansa had left a basketful of dirty laundry on top of the machine. Somehow she didn’t get to wash it, in between serving lukewarm burgers and waving shotguns at dangerous men. She hastens to throw one of Rickon's t-shirts over her strawberry-patterned panties and pretends she hasn't seen Jon's fleeting smile.

"Rickon, out. Bran, we'll talk later. Look after your brother. I'll fix you something to eat as soon as I'm done here. Give me these,” she adds for Jon's benefit, hand extended for the pills. “They gotta be well past the use-by date.”

He holds his head back obediently as she cleans his mouth and nose, using a wet towel and then another, rinsing the blood off in the sink.

"This reminds me," she begins, and then stops abruptly. This is not something that they've done until now: exchanging memories, sharing their thoughts of Robb out loud.

"This reminds you, what?"

He winces as she dabs some antiseptic on a scratch along the side of his nose. The narrow gash in his forehead she hasn't dared touch yet, but she's cleaned around it, wiping the blood and grime from his cheek and scrubbing at his beard with the towel until the dark hair is slick beneath her fingers. Jon has parted his legs to allow her to stand between them, holding on to the sink with one hand, the other gripping her hip.

"I had this thing with one of Robb's friends a while back... We went out..." _He invited me to his house and we had sex._ "He treated me like shit. Robb found out. He went to beat up the guy and came back with a knife graze, and we had to clean it before mum found out. He was standing where you're sitting with a proper hole in his side..."

"What friend?" Jon asks.

Sansa smiles and leans forward to kiss the scowl off his lips.

"I knew you'd say that. Aren't you in enough trouble already? And anyways, Robb got him pretty bad. He'd taken the dog along."

"The Wull brothers," Jon says. "That fight he had with the Wulls. Which one was it?"

"You're gonna need stitches for this, I think," Sansa says, fingers hovering over the wound at his temple. "Just a few but..."

She hesitates. Though she's more than capable to sew, she's never had to stitch up a wound, and she's no longer the reckless girl who let her brother have a mouthful of moonshine before she poured the rest of the bottle over the wound in his side.

"I'm not sure I can do it," she admits.

Jon leans sideways to get a glimpse of the gash in the mirror above the sink. It's a wonder he can see anything, what with all the boyish fingerprints smeared across the glass.

"Go get Mel," he says.

Sansa stiffens. Jon’s grey eyes narrow and his hand slides from her hip to her lower back, pushing her forward. Bowing his head, he rests his forehead above her belly.

"Don't you fret. If you knew what it was like, to be looked at by you, you wouldn't be worrying like that. I ain't gonna stray."

Almost at once, the tension seeps out of her, and she knows that he can feel it, because he shakes his head and his knuckles give her back a quick comforting rub.

Sansa touches the bloody imprint he just left on her shirt.

"I'll go," she says. "Keep your head back, eyes on the ceiling."

 

 

 

 

Mel doesn't waste any time. She gathers a few things in a plastic bag while Sansa waits in the kitchen and Davos tries not to shoot her worried glances from where he's sitting in front of the television.

"Have you got any of these pills left? The ones I gave you?"

Sansa nods.

"Alright. You can give him the ones that aren't too strong, no more than three a day."

"He's gonna drive back the moment you're done," Sansa says, careful not to sound bitter about it.

"Men," Mel murmurs, as she plucks her sewing kit from the magazine rack beside the TV.

"What was that?" Davos asks, with a faint smile.

Mel turns her large dark eyes on him.

"I said, 'Men.' You seem to think it's our business to make sure you don't die before your time..."

"I'm surely not as difficult to manage as Jon," Davos protests, in that steady way he has, which tends to lend a great deal of weight to his arguments.

"Thank god," Mel says. "I wouldn't have the patience."

 _No,_ Sansa thinks, _you wouldn't. It's way easier to reach for him when you feel like it._

She couldn't say how, but as Mel sweeps past her, she could swear that the woman knows exactly what’s on her mind.

Mel waits until they're outside and at some distance from the house before she says, "I owe you an apology, Sansa."

Sansa casts her a suspicious glance.

"When you came back here, I didn't think you’d last a week. I thought you'd try. Give up and leave again. It wouldn't have been a failure. You'd have thought it was, but some people just aren't made for this godforsaken place."

She stops on the Starks’ threshold, making the most of the few inches she has on Sansa to give her a solemn look.

"Your brother wasn't," she says. "It'd have eaten at him - it'd have ended up killing him. That's all the comfort I can give you, Birdie."

"That's a hell of a comfort," Sansa says, and realizes as she does that Jon's grim brand of sarcasm hasn't only been rubbing off on Bran.

 

 

 

 

Sansa remains in the doorway as Mel tends to Jon, only moving when she's asked to, to fetch a bottle of whiskey and then to provide more light to guide Mel's hand, setting down Bran's desk lamp on the edge of the sink. Mel's movements are brisk and efficient, and yet the whole scene is disturbing to watch. It’s hard not to see something sensual in the way Jon gives himself over to her with his eyes closed, eyelashes dark over paper-white skin, full lips pressed tightly together.

 _Mine, mine, mine_ , she thinks, heel tapping softly against the ground.

Until Mel is done and stepping backwards, fingers flicking the remaining thread into the sink.

Jon gets up and goes to admire her handiwork in the mirror.

"Thank you."

His eyes meet Sansa's, pale blue and wide in her drawn face. He has the gall to ask, with his crooked smile, "How do I look?"

Sansa sniffs in disdain, but she hurries to slip under his outstretched arm. Jon kisses the crown of her head and rocks her softly against him.

"You'll keep a scar," Mel says. "It'll probably suit you. I'll leave you to it, then."

She walks out, with her tall body and her blue jeans and her hair the color of red wine, and Sansa clings to Jon, wondering how much longer she'll be allowed to do so.

Not even a minute, it turns out.

"I gotta get going," he says.

 

 

 

 

It's no use fighting against him but she does all the same, all the way to the truck. He leaves anyways.

 

 

 

 

As if to make matters worse, she has to deal with her brothers over dinner, and particularly Bran, who has not forgotten her promise that they would talk.

"It should be me dealing with this,” he tells her, with worrisome serious. “I should be the one protecting you."

Sansa has to seize his hand and make him promise, her voice raw, "Don't do anything that could make them think you're a threat, Bran. _Don't._ "

He holds her gaze for a very long time before he lowers his eyes, with a hint of color in his long, pale face.

When he gives her a stiff nod, Sansa feels some of the weight lift off her chest. If she can keep a single one of her tall, brooding Stark men - if she can keep at least one of them safe...

"Thank you," she whispers.

Before the conversation can grow any more emotional, Rickon flips over his yoghurt, in an attempt to share some with Ghost and Shaggydog. It's possible that he did it on purpose.

 _It’s three Stark men I’ve got, not two,_ she corrects herself, as she hands him a sponge.

 

 

 

 

There's a spot close to the observatory from which you can look out over the whole valley. Sansa likes it most at night, when the lights in the town and in the houses on the foothills remind her that she's not the only one awake in the valley.

She used to fantasize about coming up there with a boy. All of the girls did. Joffrey took Margaery, but he never took Sansa.

Though she hasn't gone there often, she recognizes the place instantly, the moment she opens her eyes. The view is fairly distinctive, and besides this is a dream, and dreams tend to work that way. Whatever setting they give you, you take it for granted, no matter how strange it might be.

Her head rests upon something that's just the right amount of soft and firm. A boy's shoulder, covered in a well-worn sweater. Though she’s feeling pleasantly numb, she forces herself to move, craning her neck back so she can look at him.

When he smiles, it looks as if someone has struck a match behind his eyes.

He reaches for her hand where it rests on his leg, pressing something in her palm and then closing her fingers around it.

Until now there wasn't any noise in the dream, but suddenly she can hear the wind howling around them, and she can feel it pulling at her hair and clothes.

Sansa opens her hand.

And as she stares and stares and as Robb’s teeth roll around in her palm, she hears Ramsay whisper, warm and slow,

"I ain't gonna stray."

 

 

 

 

It's the smell of whiskey pulls her from sleep, that and Jon's legs pushing her slightly forwards on the narrow bed, and his breath raising the hair on the back of her neck.

A whisper, "Sleep."

"What..."

Now he sighs. He gives her neck a cold nuzzle.

"Didn't kill anyone, if that's what you're asking. Just had a talk with the fishermen. Sleep."

"Hold me?" she whispers.

"Them bruises didn't disappear overnight," Jon whispers back.

"I need to know you're here," Sansa says. "And I need to know it's you."

Reaching back, she pulls his arm around her, relieved when he doesn't try to resist and his hand slips under her shirt, his palm pressed flat against her skin.

There are bad habits to take, and undoubtedly this is one of them. Curling in against his chest and letting her body believe that it needs this to fall asleep: Jon's steady hand and Jon's steadying heartbeat. It would be truer to admit to herself that this is likely to be their last night together, that by tomorrow he'll have gone for Ramsay's throat, unless it’s Ramsay who attacks him first.

But if she follows this train of thought there will be no sleeping, and she can use all the sleep she can get.


	16. Coal Dust

His misgivings about touching her have disappeared by morning, unless it's that he's forgotten about them. She's still half asleep as he takes her, his arms wrapped tight around her chest, her back to his hammering heart. By the time his hand dips between her legs she's pulled the pillow in front of her mouth so the other occupants of the house won't hear the hitching of her breath and her pleased little sounds.

Outside the door a boy runs towards the kitchen and Bran's wheelchair knocks into some leftover toy, Rickon's or the dogs'. There's talk of breakfast and an answering woof that she thinks might be Shaggydog's.

Jon stays inside her a moment longer as they catch their breath. If he moved an inch backwards, he'd fall off the bed.

Lying on her side, Sansa is facing the wall with its array of glitter-framed pictures, and she lets her eyes drift from one to the next. Sleepovers and school games, hikes and hunts and family gatherings. Blue Flamingos with Margaery, back when they did their hair the same way, in tight, frizzy curls. Rickon's fourth birthday with their uncles standing behind him, good-natured Ed with his red hair, a sweeter version of her mother, and Ben with his thoughtful smile, long-faced like her father. Robb and her in the woods. Robb and Theon on the road, during that road trip they took after graduation.

Robb is standing with his arms crossed under the glare of a southern sun, with those cheap knock-off aviators he’d bought at the border, the lenses a blinding blue. Theon has his elbows braced against the hood of the car and he poses with all the Greyjoy cockiness, loose limbs and shifting eyes and that conniving smile.

"You were there," Sansa says, tapping the picture.

"Hmm," Jon answers, lifting his head a bit. "Yeah, I took that one."

Sansa twists around, leg hitched over his knee so they'll both fit, face to face on her childhood bed.

"I don't have a picture of you."

Jon raises his eyebrows. "You have me. What d'you need a picture for?"

In the kitchen something shatters, maybe a glass. Rickon shouts and Bran shouts back.

_Make your own damn breakfast!_

"Bran, language," Sansa murmurs.

She gives Jon a quick kiss and climbs over him to get off the bed.

"Could you drop me off at the bar?"

"Cersei owe you money?"

Sansa pauses, holding up her jeans and with her foot hovering in the air.

"Actually. Actually, she does." She pulls the jeans up her legs and begins to search for her bra. "I can ask her later. Brienne... She's a trucker. For the Sapphire Isle company? She's taking me to coal country. To see Jeyne."

Spying a flash of white cotton, she pulls the bra from under Jon's jeans, where they lie in a rumpled pile on the floor.

"Jeyne Westerling," Jon says, grey eyes following her movements as she pulls on a sweater, small breasts and slender hips disappearing under shapeless polyester. "Never stops being weird," he muses, "seeing you in Robb's clothes."

Sansa looks down at the large wolf's head stitched across the front of the sweater.

"You prefer when I wear yours? Or the things Petyr bought me? I don't have much stuff that's actually mine."

"Good weird. I guess. You shouldn't go to the mines. More trouble than it's worth."

"I'm going anyways," she declares, with a stubborn tilt to her chin.

Jon rises from the bed and comes to stand before her, drawing her in with both hands.

"You go take a shower, Jon Snow," she says, wrinkling her nose.

The kiss is slow and thorough, with just a hint of a bite, much like the drawled order that follows.

"You go first, girl. I'll feed your wolves."

 

 

 

 

It becomes clear over breakfast that she's losing her grip on things. Some of the old rituals are the same: coffee in the old tin mug, Bran cutting up his toast with a knife and fork, Rickon's school bag waiting by the front door.

The rest, however, is unfamiliar and messy, and if her mother had been here, Sansa would have expected a good scolding. She can almost hear Catelyn’s stern voice.

There's Jon's scratches and stitches ( _If you behave like a stray, starting fights, trailing blood inside the house, you'll be fed like we feed the strays - on the porch_ ). There's the fact that Davos has been invited in to have breakfast with them, because it felt unfair to make him wait outside when he'd be driving the boys again ( _No visitors inside the house before lunch. Theon wants his coffee, he can have it in the yard_ ). Rickon is pouring way too much milk in Davos's coffee and Bran has brought a pile of comic books to the table ( _No reading while you eat, Brandon Stark. I can see you looking down. Whatever's on your knees, it’s got its place in the living room_ ).

And what would be the worst offence in Catelyn's eyes, Sansa has Jon sit at the head of the table, and she drinks her coffee sitting on his knee, his arm holding her in place.

 _This is the last piece of Stark property that boy will ever get his hands on_ , Catelyn had told Robb, as they stood in front of the forest. Sansa had pressed her palms against the bark of the nearest tree, promising herself that Jon Snow wouldn't get this one, or the one beside it, or the one beside that one...

It would be foolish to expect things to go back to normal.

It would be a lie to say that she wants them to.

 

 

 

 

On their way to the bar, Jon stops the truck alongside the forest to let Ghost out. The dog quickly disappears under the trees.

The coffee is finally starting to kick in and without Ghost's body weighing on her legs, Sansa can no longer ignore the cold wind blowing in through the open door, or the dull throbbing of wounds days-old, or the faint soreness between her thighs - _You should sleep,_ he'd said, though as he did he'd gently pushed her legs apart and they hadn't slept, not for another hour. And she'd hold on to this particular ache if she could, this proof that he was inside her moments ago, alive and warm and full of wants.

"You're going to work, right?" she asks, her eyes searching the edge of the woods for a glimpse of Ghost.

"Hmm."

She rounds on him with as much steel-jawed determination as she’d put into scolding either one of her brothers.

"Jon Snow."  
  
"I am," he says. "Ghost will meet me there. I'll keep him today."

"I know you're going to do something stupid," she seethes. "That's what you told me, when you said I should take him. Take the dog for when you do something stupid. You're going to..."

He muffles this fast protest with a hand on her mouth, and before she knows it the cigarette smell of his skin has her eyes well up and she's shoving at his arm to huddle against his chest.

"Don't go. Don't go."

Jon doesn't say anything. The only sound in the car is the high-pitched moan of the wind in the trees, and even now there's a pull to it. It could be that she's clinging to Jon and it could be that he's holding her in place so the forest won't drag her out of the car.

They're both trapped, she realizes. No matter how much she wants to put his well-being ahead of her own interests - it’s not just her interests that are at stake. It’s Bran's and Rickon's and Arya's, and those of the dead Starks whose memories will never let them be.

There’s a chance Jon would throw it all away if he could. Take her and make a life of it, the two of them, wherever they end up. But he won't, because they've both been raised to believe that one’s stubborn pride and a few acres of woods matter more than those few moments when a heart beats before it stops.

A car drives by and honks at them. Sansa turns in time to see a bad paint job, bright red, and a cracked windshield and a waving arm, unless it’s a crude gesture.

"Grenn and Olly," Jon says, his arm still around her shoulders. "They go for a drink before work sometimes."

The loud honk has startled her enough that she sits up and wipes her red eyes.  
  
"Take me to the bar."

Jon closes the door but at first he doesn't start the engine and merely looks at her, grey eyes pensive, until he seems to come to a decision.

Before he can get more than a few words out she's clamped her hand over his mouth.  
  
"Drive," she orders.

And the faster the better, so that they can outpace his aborted words and leave them behind in the dust. If he has to go, honor code and all, and she has to let him, for the good of her family and home, she'll rob him of this farewell. Try to force him to return, and say it in full, as a greeting and not as a goodbye.

_You know I lo..._

 

 

 

 

Though she's spent the last few minutes of the drive steeling herself ahead of seeing Cersei, convinced she'd have to go inside the bar to fetch Brienne, she finds that she doesn’t have to. The trucker's co-pilot is waiting for her in the parking lot.

Pod looks chilled to the bone, stomping his booted feet with his gloved hands shoved under his armpits. He greets her with a grin and an awkward, one-armed hug.

"I'll go get the boss," he says.

Sansa waits as he runs back inside the bar. The parking lot looks far less ominous in the grey daylight than it did last night. It also looks colder and drearier. Maybe it’s the fact that she won’t be working here anymore that makes her see it in a different light.

 _The end of the world,_ she thinks, and certainly it looks like it. Like a place you'd go if you had no other choice. What a comfort it must be for the clients, to know that they're only passing through - that they have other lives to return to.

_If I have to live a hard life, I might as well do it someplace I hold dear._

Brienne and Pod step back outside. Brienne is zipping up her big green jacket and looking characteristically focused, though she lightens up when she sees Sansa, a small smile breaking across her rough-hewn features.

The smile disappears when she gets close enough to notice the bruises on Sansa's face.  
  
"Who did this to you?"

Sansa wouldn't want to be Myranda right now, not with the way Brienne's unconsciously clenching and unclenching her fists, as if she were preparing for what would no doubt be a considerable punch.

"It doesn't matter. Shae said you could take me to see Jeyne? I'll compensate you, of course."

"Of course not," Brienne says, her eyes widening, as if Sansa had said something particularly preposterous.

"I'll pay for the gas," Sansa insists. "You just let me know how much."

"Get in. You're not paying anything. Pod, give the girl a sandwich."

And so it is that Sansa finds herself sitting between Brienne and Pod in the big Sapphire Salts truck, a limp ham-and-cheese sandwich in hand (either the cheese is liquid, or it's really tasteless mayonnaise). The road towards the mines is one long dark grey ribbon towards purple-blue mountains, with tall fir forests speeding by and trucks going both ways, some of which she recognizes.

"The girl seemed eager to talk to you, but she wouldn't say why," Brienne says. "I figure it's easier if you just ask her yourself."

"Thank you. For going and for taking me. You didn't have to and I..."

"I used to drive one of these refrigerated trucks," Brienne says, somewhat abruptly. "For Robert and Renly Baratheon. They're a big name around here too, aren't they, the Baratheons?"

"Yes," Sansa says. Beside her, Pod is fiddling with the radio stations. "They're from the valley, but most of them moved to town ages ago. It's only Stannis now, the sheriff."

"Renly's a good man," Brienne says, voice softening like maybe she means something else. "I don't know about Stannis."

"He's alright. He's a valley guy."

"A valley guy?"

Sansa lifts her hands as if she could somehow communicate her meaning that way. Men like Stannis, hard on the outside but with weaknesses you can punch a hole through.

"Good enough," she says, picking up the sandwich and taking another bite. "Gives a better impression than the men you meet in the mountains, because he's stuck around school longer, but really, underneath he's the same. It's good because it means he gets it, and it's bad because... Well, because he still thinks he can change things, and it'll take more than him to make that happen. Valley guys have ideas, but not the drive? Not like city guys."

"And the men from the mountains?" Pod asks.

Brienne glares at him. Obviously they've had a conversation about subjects that should be avoided, though Sansa couldn't say if the subject in question was Robb, or if they've heard about Jon.

She looks out at the pointed tops of the firs and at the frost that looks like snow. That's the name her aunt had written on Jon's birth certificate. _Snow._ It took years for word to get out about Jon's father. The Targaryen, the married man.

"They’re rough," she says. "Territorial. They bear grudges like nobody else. Very loyal, too."

"And the women?" Brienne asks. "Don't they ever try to leave?"

"Sometimes, but they come back. Maybe if you went to a big city... But a small one, there'll always be a mountain on your horizon, won't there? A mountain in your way."

The only mountain out back of the small settlement Brienne drives her to is a slag heap. There’s still mining being done in these parts, though not for gold. It’s all coal and the landscape echoes it, bleak and black and remorseless.

The dust on Jeyne’s roof is several inches thick, solidified into a strange grey pelt.

“I’ll go talk to her alone,” Sansa decides. “I’ll try not to be long.”

“We’ll wait,” Brienne says levelly, as she leans back against the side of the Sapphire Isle truck. Pod gives her an encouraging smile.

 

 

 

 

The woman who opens the door looks tired, but also like she might be fighting against it, with her too bright eyes and the nervous twitch of her mouth. Her eyebrows are drawn-on, her green eyes underlined in black. Youngish. Not so different from the women of Sansa’s mountains besides. It’s the same colorless clothes that could have been red or green or yellow once, the same layers of them over jutting bones and tired flesh.

“I’ve come to see Jeyne,” Sansa says.

The woman looks her up and down, slowly, in a deliberate attempt at making her uncomfortable.

“Hello to you too, girl. What do you want with Jeyne?”

“I’m Robb’s sister, Sansa. Robb’s gone missing and there’s some say he left with Jeyne...”

“Your brother’s not with my girl, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Maybe this is what Jon felt, Sansa reflects, as he tried to crack the ice with a spade. Like something must give, eventually, but in the meantime it’s hard on the arms - hard on your courage.

“I just want to talk to her, see if maybe she knows something.”

“They were as good as married, my daughter and your brother,” the woman says, abrupt. “We don’t have nothing to prove it, but he’d made promises. The kind of promise that binds families for generations. But maybe it ain’t the same in those mountains of yours. Maybe you don’t know the meaning of blood up there.”

 _God help me, I won’t bind my family to yours,_ Sansa thinks, and her distaste must show because the woman sneers, her hand tightening around the doorjamb. Sansa notices the bright red nail polish, and the sharpness of the nails.

“It takes a word to undo four generations of goodwill,” Jeyne’s mother says. “Just a word and everyone from here to the Fool’s Pits and the Crag will turn against Jon Snow. He thinks he’s friends with the miners, he can think again. He thinks he’s got a friend in the sheriff, he can think again.”

Sansa bristles.  
  
“You don’t threaten me. I ain’t afraid of you. I came...”

“Mom?”

Sansa’s first thought is of a sister. Younger than Jeyne by a few years, maybe. It’s not until the girl has seized the woman by the sleeve and turned her green eyes upon Sansa that she understands that it’s Jeyne herself. She looks awfully small in her old grey robe, with her narrow ankles showing under the cuffs of her jeans, and her feet tiny in their cotton slippers.

“You must be Sansa,” she says, with a small smile.

 _Pretty smile,_ Sansa thinks, because she’s trying, almost desperately, to hang on to something - anything - that might explain Robb forsaking everything for a girl like this. A coal miner’s daughter, small and sweet and young, but.

But no Margaery. No Theon. She’s come to learn this about Robb, that he loved the dauntless ones, the ones with the eye-catching smiles.

As the silence stretches and Sansa doesn’t say anything and just goes on staring, Jeyne’s smile begins to waver. Yet she quickly gets a hold of herself and says, with false chirpiness,

“I just made coffee. Do you want some?”

 

 

 

 

They go out back of the house, where there’s a creek and an old tree with a tire for a swing and a dead trunk that allows you to cross the riverbed towards the steep wall of dirt and grass that marks the end of the property. On the other side of it is a field, Jeyne tells Sansa. She used to play there as a kid, until she stepped on a broken bottle and they filled up the ditch, and raised that pile of dirt to keep the wasteland at bay.

“And after that, it’s the mines,” she says. “The field will have to go, someday. I think it’ll just fall in. Maybe our house will fall in too.”

“Brienne said you wanted to talk to me.”

Sansa sets the lukewarm coffee down on the ground beside her. Jeyne turns back from where she’d been crossing the stream upon the fallen trunk, one small step at a time.

“Yes, but it’s not what you think.”

“What do I think?” Sansa frowns.

“My Ma wants me to ask things from you. Money. But I won’t. It ain’t right. So you can relax about that. I don’t expect nothing, and anyways, your cousin already came by. I wanted to say no, but she’ll take the money no matter what I say, and it’s true we can use it. You don’t raise a baby on...”

“A baby,” Sansa interrupts, wide-eyed, her stomach sinking. Naively, she’d thought things couldn’t get any worse.

Jeyne hurries back towards her, jumping off the trunk and coming to sit beside her on the grass, her hand reaching for Sansa’s knee.

“I thought she’d have told you already. When you got here, when I was getting dressed.”

“You’re pregnant. You’re pregnant and it's Robb's.”

“I know it doesn’t show,” Jeyne says, looking down at her stomach as if it’s something to feel sorry about. “Doctor says I’m slight and it won’t show until I’m pretty far into it. I’m pretty far into it and it’s still not showing much, unless you touch... Here, give me your hand.”

Sansa doesn’t think to withdraw it and Jeyne pulls open the robe and presses her clammy palm against her belly. There’s definitely a bump here, under the old cotton t-shirt. Sansa swallows and pulls her hand back.

_Robb. Robb, you idiot._

“Don’t worry,” Jeyne says again, as she reattaches her robe and returns her hand to Sansa’s knee. “I really ain’t gonna ask you for anything. Don’t let my mother get to you. She thinks... She thinks because he was gonna marry me, you’ve got a duty or something, but I know how it is for your family. Robb told me. You’ve got it hard enough without me and my baby just... adding weight to your troubles. But I still thought... It could be good to tell you. Because it’s still Robb’s, and I’m keeping it, and maybe someday it... Maybe it’ll look like him, and you... You’ll want to see it. I’d like you to see it.”

Sansa breathes out slowly, looking at the swaying trees and listening to the gurgle of the dirty creek. _This ain’t no place to raise a child_. But then, there’s no place in this country where she’d think it safe to raise one.

_This ain’t no place to raise Robb’s child._

The poisonous knowledge spreads inside her, and she knows it won’t leave now, that it’ll be a new source of worry on top of everything else.

_She’s not your kin. This ain’t your country, and it ain’t your people._

“What are you gonna do?” she asks, forcing the words out because she knows she shouldn’t be speaking them.

“My father’s gone but I’ve got an uncle, he’s found me a cousin who wants to marry. Not here. Next valley over. He’ll take me, even with the baby. I’d rather stay... Stay here.” Jeyne’s green eyes harden, suddenly as cutting as glass. “It’s Robb’s child and I want it brought up where Robb grew up. Not in the mountains maybe but... Not in another country, you know.”

Sansa takes another look at her then, and sees the steely glint of a backbone under her frail appearance.

“So you were going to marry Robb,” she says. A timid peace offering.

“I love him,” Jeyne says. “Loved him. He’s dead, isn’t he?” Sansa’s mouth twists and she waves her hand. “Oh, don’t mind me. I cried about it already. I cried for days. Mom thought I was going mad. But what’s there to be done. I told him about the baby. I said I’d understand if he didn’t want to... If he’d rather... I mean, we were seeing each other but it’d only been a few weeks. He came by, sometimes, after work. Before Mom got home. When I told him... He looked shocked. Boys, right. They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t give it a second thought. But he said he’d take care of us. Straightaway, he did. He said we’d get married and I’d come home with him.”

Sansa wants to ask her if she knew that Robb was already engaged, but it seems unnecessarily cruel. It’s unlikely that Jeyne knew about that, or about how this whole situation came about because Robb was spiraling out of control. An insect slamming against a window, again and again - slamming into Theon and veering off, into Margaery, into the Freys’ clutches, only to be temporarily set free. And he alighted upon Jeyne’s finger and stung her so hard that she’ll never recover.

“I can’t help you,” Sansa tells her, because it has to be said. “I’ve got my own troubles.”

She won’t go so far as to say, take that marriage offer. Take it and move away. It’s not any advice she’d ever take, and so she won’t give it, either.

“I know you can’t,” Jeyne says, kindly. “I’ll be fine. And like I said, your family already did a lot for me. It was a lot of money. I’m really grateful for it.”

“A lot of money,” Sansa repeats, confused.

“You know. When your cousin came. The one with the white dog. Came by after Robb went missing. Said he’d try to help. But you can tell him maybe I won’t need it much longer. I don’t want to... I know you’re not rich, either. You can use all the money you can get. But I mean what I said.” She sets her hands atop Sansa’s. “If you want to come see the child, later on. Anytime.”

She has a shy smile and suddenly Sansa can see it - how it lights her up, green eyes glinting like the water in a forest pond when it’s hit by the sun, framed by the delicate smile and the wayward curls of brown hair.

In Robb’s place, running away from it all, she might have ended up here as well, clutching that girl’s hands in a weedy backyard, sitting on the ground as she sniffs and tries to hold back her tears.

 

 

 

 

Back in the truck, Brienne keeps casting her sideways glances. Sansa barely notices that Pod is trying to give her a mint until he gives up and dumps the whole pack of them in her lap. She looks down at it, startled, and then back up at his concerned face.

“Thanks.”  
  
Brienne clears her throat.  
  
“Did it go how you wanted? Back there.”  
  
Sansa gives it some thought.  
  
“Not really,” she admits. “More trouble, more-like.”  
  
_Jon putting his neck on the line again._  
  
“Can you drive me to town?” she asks.

 

 

 

 

Brienne drops her off a few streets away from the town square, so she won’t have to drive the truck through the town center. Sansa accepts her number and Pod’s pack of mints.

“Thank you, for making the enquiries and for taking me there.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it.”  
  
As often before she speaks, Brienne narrows her pale blue eyes, almost squinting as she weighs her words.

“Your mother was coming back from a visit to her family,” she says. “She hitchhiked because her car had broken down... No, because she’d had a fight with the friend who was supposed to drive her. She was standing on the side of the road, signaling to me. Long red hair like yours and jeans and a green jacket. I could see the car behind her, the guy waiting. So I slowed down, picked her up. Wasn’t the same truck, but she sat in the middle, where you’ve been sitting. Talked the whole way, about you - her husband, her kids, the house, the woods. And she said...”

Brienne hesitates. Sansa cocks her head, looks up at her because Brienne is so much taller, even now as they stand side by side beside the truck.

“What did she say?”

“She said there’d been times when she thought she’d never be at home here, but it’s the family makes the home, and maybe one day it’d be the same for you, too.”

Sansa pictures her mother, striding down the side of an empty road as Petyr calls after her. _Oh, come on, Cat. Come back. You can’t seriously think that there’s anything for you up there. What, more kids? A shot to make the regrets go down, throat to belly?_

And Catelyn turning back, younger than she probably was, as young as in those teenage pictures Sansa had found in an album once. Flipping him the finger.

“I wish it hadn’t taken her dying for me to find that out,” she tells Brienne.

 

 

 

 

She’s long lost the lawyer’s card, but he’d said he could be found at the town hall on certain days. Sansa asks after him and once she’s done staring down her nose at her, the secretary consents to give a few calls.

Sam Tarly’s office is across the square, above a dimly-lit drugstore where Sansa used to buy cigarettes, flirting with the owner so he’d slip her free candy along with her pack of smokes.

 _Tarly & Tarly,_ the sign reads.

“My wife,” Tarly explains, as he clears a chair full of folders for Sansa to sit into. “We’ve been in business together since we got our degrees, and she didn’t want to keep her maiden name... Family problems. Her old man is vicious like you wouldn’t believe...”

Sansa watches as he goes on moving piles of papers around and knocking over cups of coffee and cartons of take-out, some of them empty, others not. The other side of the office - his wife’s, she supposes - is much cleaner. There’s a bright blue carpet on the ground, littered with rattles and stuffed toys.

Maybe the universe is trying to tell her something. She’s about as ready to have a baby as she is to get married, though in a distant, dreamlike way, there’s something appealing about it. A grey-eyed cub, as feral as her baby brother.

A kid she could neither feed nor educate properly. She sets her teeth and clenches her joined hands and she starts talking, before he can dawdle some more.

“I came to ask about the will. I don’t know if you remember, you came to see me eight or nine days ago...”

“Of course I remember,” Sam says, going still.

Carefully he sets his coffee-stained pages upon the desk and watches as the pile wobbles. When it doesn’t fall, a smile spreads across his jocund face. He goes to sit across from her, winces and then pulls out a toy from under him, setting it down on the table between them.

Sansa stares at the dog with its bobblehead as Sam resumes, “You’re Sansa Stark. The will was drawn by your brother Robb, with your uncle and a few other witnesses present.”

“I had a few questions.”  
  
“Of course! Anything... Anything I can do to help.”  
  
_Why?_

He’s a friend of Jon’s, she remembers. It’s a strange idea, that this shy, fumbling man should get along with Jon, who’s never anything but confident, maybe even too arrogant at times. But Jon’s good at making friends, it seems. At inspiring loyalty in people. It certainly worked on her, though she doubts he went about it the same way with Sam. The watchfulness and the nuzzles, a warm hand on the back of your neck as he slips a cigarette between your teeth.

“Do you smoke?” she asks.  
  
“I... No,” Sam says. “But you can if you like. Let me just crank open a window.”

Sansa only has the one cigarette, half-crumpled at the bottom of her pocket. The lighter she pulls out of some inner pocket of Robb’s jacket, an ugly plastic thing with a naked girl on the side. A joke or a present from Theon, or both, maybe.

“To use the will, they’d have to prove that Robb’s dead, right?”

“They’d have trouble using it otherwise, yes,” Sam says. “I haven’t heard from them in a couple days, not that it means anything.”

“Well, Frey’s dead.”  
  
“That he is, and the will did name him, specifically...”

“And if Robb had any kids. Could they...” She takes a breath and dives right in. “If he got a girl pregnant, could we contest the will?”

Sam’s expression doesn’t change. It’s still that same look of concern he had the first time they met, brown eyes soft and maybe a little pitying.

“You could try. In the girl’s name if he married her, otherwise yours might carry more weight. You’d have to prove undue influence. It would be expensive, and if I were you, I wouldn’t try it unless you don’t have a choice. Say, if they prove your brother’s as dead as they say. Which they won’t.”

“Jon talked to you,” Sansa realizes. “Of course he did. Fuck.”

She crushes the end of her cigarette onto the nearest plate, amidst breadcrumbs and traces of barbecue sauce.

“He’s an old friend,” Sam says, as if in apology. “He had the same questions you did...”

“Your old friend is putting his affairs in orders,” Sansa snaps. “As a lawyer, you should have been able to tell. Did he draw a will, too? Sign off the woods to me? Or to my brothers? Yes, it’s probably wiser that way. So that if the Boltons get me, Bran and Rickon won’t be without a house.”

“He’s doing what he thinks best,” Sam says, dutifully, though the phrasing and his embarrassed grimace are signs in themselves. He’s not necessarily convinced that Jon’s understanding of what’s best aligns with everyone else’s.

“I’ll save him,” Sansa says, as much for herself as for Sam. “I put him in this mess and I’ll pull him out of it. You just watch me. I don’t ever want to hear about this will again.”

 

 

 

 

Thinking to hitch a ride back home, she tries to drop in on Margaery at the hairdressing salon, but it’s only Margaery’s grandmother there, a fearful lady who should have retired decades ago, but who’ll probably be found dead one day behind the front desk, her hands curved protectively around the register.

“It’s funny,” the old woman says, peering at Sansa from above her gold-rimmed glasses. “I could have sworn that’s why she left early. To go find you.”

“We must have missed each other,” Sansa says, a little discomfited.

She steps back out before she can be subjected to a comment about her marriage prospects, or about Jon or Ramsay, and how hard it must be for a girl alone to raise two boys and keep a house. As the door closes behind her she hears the clients whisper - old ladies, all of them, and not very interested in keeping their voices down.

“... prettier than you said.”  
  
“Yes, yes, the Targaryen boy.”

As she crosses the square, resigning herself to the long walk home, another undesirable voice rises behind her.

“Hey! Hey. Sansa Stark.”

She turns so abruptly he takes a step back. In the light of day, he looks even scrawnier than he had that night outside the mill, with his deep-set eyes and his small, angry mouth.

“I don’t have anything to say to you. Leave me alone.”

“I just think you should look out for yourself. Everyone’s here saying you don’t. I could... I could walk you home. If you like.”

Sansa can tell that this isn’t what he’d set out to say, and she wonders what led him to change his mind. Wonders until she sees how his eyes linger upon her hair and eyes and mouth, and how it leads to him nervously wetting his lips.

 _That’s all I need,_ she thinks, the tension of the past day getting the better of her. _Another man after me. Not even a man. A stupid, dangerous boy._

“You know I’m with Jon,” she says. Olly’s lip curls.

“For how much longer?” he calls, and it’s lucky he’s standing several feet away, or she might have slapped him.

 

 

 

 

The house has barely come into view that she can tell something is wrong. It’s not the car parked out front - her father’s car, she realizes, clean and shiny and with a new tire and the trunk closing again without any need for a length of rope.

It’s rather the two figures sitting on the porch, side by side, the both of them rising as she walks across the yard.

“Your car,” Davos says. “I fixed it.”

Like he wants to get it out as fast as he can, before the rest of the news can drown it out.

“Thanks,” Sansa says, a little absently, her eyes already drifting to Margaery.

 _Speak,_ she thinks _. For God’s sake. Just speak._

“Birdie.” Margaery’s blue eyes are way too bright and there’s a worried crease between her slender brows. “I tried calling you. I left you a dozen messages. He’s dead.”

Sansa staggers and at once Davos is beside her, his words barely audible above the sudden roar in her ears.

“Bolton,” he says. “Ramsay Bolton, not Jon.”  
  
Still it takes a minute for the porch to stop swimming, and her heart never really quiets down.


	17. Roadside

As soon as she’s regained control of her movements, Sansa shakes herself free of Davos’ hold. She walks over to where Margaery is standing and shoves her hard. Margaery has to latch onto the banister so she doesn’t fall over the porch steps.

“You...”, Sansa stammers, choking on her anger. “You...! This was... How _cruel_ can you be?”

“Cruel!” Margaery exclaims. “Darling, I came as soon as I heard. The only reason you’re getting word so early is because I pulled strings, flirting with that douchebag deputy.”

“You _knew_ I’d think it was Jon!” Sansa says, still too shaken to produce more than a trembling rattle. “You... What kind of a friend...”

"Don't take your anger out on me, Birdie," Margaery warns, and though her tone is warm enough, Sansa hears a warning in it as well. "We both know I ain’t your problem. Roose Bolton is your problem. Yours and Jon's."

"What happened?"

"One of the meth labs blew up. Ramsay was in there with a few others... One of the Karstarks. Rick? Creg? They don't know who the others were."

"Jon?" Sansa asks, voice wavering.

"No, your cousin's fine. For now. I mean, the law might buy that Ramsay blew himself up but you can bet your pretty smile that Roose won't."

"I'll pretend I haven't heard any of this," Davos says. "But if Bolton comes after someone, it'll be Jon. You should be safe..."

"Safe!" Sansa exclaims, bewildered. "The will still exists. Ramsay said they might have Robb's _teeth_. Do you really think Roose will leave me alone, now we've given him a reason to bear a grudge?"

"What do you mean, his teeth," Margaery says, her voice jumping slightly.

Sansa looks at them then - really looks at them, for the first time maybe since she arrived.

Margaery does seem to have come as fast as she could. She's got mud stains from her lilac flats to her knees - trust her to never wear the right shoes - and there's a smudge of purple and gold make-up under her eyes.

Davos looks concerned, standing there in what Sansa has come to think of as his "fishing outfit", with a green jacket full of pockets over a worn-looking striped shirt, yellow, green and white, and mud-splattered trousers tucked into rubber boots. They didn't live here always, him and Mel - before them there was a family; Sansa used to play with their daughter. The Seaworths will always be strangers in this valley, and yet over the past few years they've found a place for themselves in the Starks' lives, and there's little doubt that she would have had even more trouble keeping afloat for the past couple months if Davos hadn't been here to help her. Driving the boys to school, hauling Bran's chair in and out of his trunk.

"I... I'm tired," she says, because the apology won't quite cross her lips, either.

"Oh honey, I know," Margaery says, seizing her hand and holding it tight.

Sansa squeezes her hand in return, but her gaze is unfocused. Instead of Margaery she sees the road stretching ahead - lean, hard men jumping off a truck and barging into the house, rifles in hand. They'd shoot Bran and the dogs and maybe Rickon would run out back if Shaggy gave him time, but the men would catch up fast enough. Hunt him down like a rabbit or squirrel and leave his body to bleed out in the forest, curled up on the frozen undergrowth.

As for her... They’d hold her down. They'd have Jon watch, swinging the butt of a gun at his head every time he tried to struggle.

She's been brought up to believe that the men in these mountains answer to some kind of code. It might be an eye for an eye, but it's a code all the same. But there's also the stirrings of madness and strain in such remote corners of the valley, and she has no doubt that Ramsay knew how to nurture it. Some of these men have hearts as hard as the rocks around them, and in others they’ve become as weak and corrupted as rotten fruit, ready to give under the pressure of a single finger.

Dangerous, the lot of them, as changeable as only men can be. Their wildness isn't the wildness of beasts, which obeys needs that can be easily understood.

It used to be about a forest, and to Sansa it still is, but she's felt Ramsay's eyes on her - she felt them even when he wasn't there, when she was at the mill and when she was at the trailer park with Myranda bearing down on her.

They'll make her pay for her youth and her resilience and her mother's red hair. They would have had her pay for being a girl alone, but now they'll make her pay for finding Jon and for the way Jon's been loving her, firm and possessive, with his bruised knuckles and his tired smile.

And the only thing holding them back is Roose Bolton. Her mother used to say... What did her mother use to say?

"Sometimes you get more out of a man who's mean and clever than you'd get from a nice loggerhead. Roose is clever, isn’t he?”

"You can't reason with Roose," Davos tells her. "I'd go talk to him for you, if that was an option, but I don't think he'll let anyone step onto his land without shooting first. Not right now in any case. It's a right affront Jon did him."

"There's always labs blowing up!" Sansa protests. "He can't be sure that Jon..."

"Look me in the eye and tell me Jon wasn't involved," Margaery says, and before Sansa can turn away she's placed a hand upon her cheek, forcing her to meet her eyes. "Yes. I thought so. I guess it's better than if he'd gone and killed the guy with his gun or fists, but it's still obvious that it was him. Might as well have left footprints in the snow. Everyone knows he's in bed with the Greyjoys now and everyone knows he's in bed with _you_..."

"When did it happen?" Sansa interrupts her, finally breaking free of her hand. "How long do I have?"

"A couple hours ago I'd say? That's when Deputy Dickhead called me..."

Sansa rushes up the porch steps and into the house. The boys are waiting in the living room, looking (at least in Rickon’s case) oddly solemn. Bran has taken out their father's hunting rifle and Rickon is holding on to Shaggydog's neck. As soon as she sees them, Sansa totters to a stop, her heart rising inside her throat.

"What can I do?" Bran asks.  
  
Behind Sansa, the front door clicks shut as Margaery and Davos come to join them.

"Help your brother pack," Sansa decides. "Pack for a few days, don't waste time. Underwear, toothbrush, nothing for the dogs, the dogs are staying here."

She pretends not to have seen the way Rickon clutches Shaggydog's neck. As long as his defiance is silent, she's reasonably sure he'll obey, and if she has to drag him to the car and kick the dog so he won't follow, so be it. If she's going to drive through the night, it won't do to have two beasts howling in the backseat, jostling her youngest brother around.

"Will the car be okay for a long journey?" she asks, turning back to Davos, who still looks as if he'd gladly wrap her in a blanket and shoulder her troubles, if only she’d let him.

"It should, though I’d have liked to do a proper trial run first. I drove it down to town and back this afternoon, but it was just the one trip."

"It'll have to do," Sansa decides. "Bran, bags."

Without waiting to see if he obeys her, she heads for the corridor, Margaery following close on her heels.

"Do you think your uncle..."

"No," Sansa says, as she precedes her into her parents' room. "They got to Ed once, I don't see what would keep them from doing it again."

She goes straight to her father's wooden desk, shoving open a drawer and then another. After Ned died, her mother had emptied some of his things, but Sansa hopes the big leather-bound address book won't be among them. She doesn't particularly feel like going on a treasure hunt in the garage right now.

"I didn't mean Ed," Margaery says. "I meant Baelish."  
  
Sansa freezes momentarily, her hands full of her father's papers.

"He’ll help, if it comes to that... I'd be grateful if you could cross your fingers that it doesn't."

She pulls out the address book from under a pile of bills that she sure as hell hopes have been paid.

"Do you want me to pack your things, too?"

Sansa looks up from where she’d been flipping through the address book.

"No. I'm coming back. You can help the boys pack, though. Make sure Rickon's bag isn't just full of dog toys."

"Sansa..."

"I'm coming back," Sansa repeats with a frown. "Someone has to sort out this mess, and who else is it gonna be? Ed? Davos? Jon's walking corpse? Go help Bran and Rickon if you can and otherwise, thank you. I really appreciate you coming to warn me. I shouldn't have lashed out earlier. Now I’ve gotta give a call..."

Margaery doesn't say another word, but she comes around the bed to hug Sansa, muffling the rest of her tirade with her rose-scented curls. Sansa hugs her back, her eyes shut tight, wishing that this were two years ago - or even two weeks ago - when it still seemed like something might be done about her fast-disintegrating life.

"I'll help them pack," Margaery says, though that's not what Sansa hears.

_Stupid girl_ , her tone implies. _You brave little fool._

 

 

 

 

The voice that eventually answers, on the sixth or seventh ring, is far younger than Sansa would have expected.

"... Is this Howland Reed's house?" she asks, already peering down at her father's scrawl to see if she might have got the number wrong.

"Yeah. What is it you want?"

The tone is brisk but not hostile. Sansa thinks it might be a girl, though she can't say for sure.

"Howland was a friend of my father, Ned Stark." If this had been any other time, she might have put to use a few of her mother's lessons, diluting her demand among a slew of polite words and well-wishes, but there's no time for this now. "When my father died, Howland wrote to my mother and said he'd always be a friend of the family, and we could visit anytime. I... I need my two brothers to stay somewhere for a few days, somewhere that isn't here. So I was wondering..."

"Howland ain't around. He won't come back for days. He went hunting in the swamps. No signal there."

"Oh. That's... that's okay," Sansa says, her hand tightening around the phone, trying to sound as if she hasn't just been dealt another crippling blow. "I'll just..."

"He ain't around but we are?" the girl says, speaking over her wobbling voice. "My brother and me. We can take care of your brothers. Dad told us about you. But I thought you had three brothers. Robb, Brandon and Rickon, right?"

"Robb's dead," Sansa says, thinking she might as well put all her cards on the table if the girl is already willing to help. "My mother's dead too, and my sister's gone. I need Bran and Rickon to stay somewhere safe for a few days while I deal with stuff up here. So you could take them on? Bran's really grown-up, he'll take care of his brother..."

"Bring 'em on," the girl says. "They'll have a room and everything. Food. All that. Do they know how to fish? I can teach them to fish. When do you figure you'll be here?"

Sansa wipes her cheek with the back of her hand. Somehow, she manages to keep her voice from shaking.

"Early tomorrow, if I drive through the night. Thank you..."

"Meera. It's fine. We grew up with them stories you know, how your father saved my dad the one time, killing that gator? Or maybe it was the other way round. He never tells it the same."

"Dad didn't, either," Sansa says, and surprises herself with a short laugh. "One time your dad was a hero and the next he was..."

"That old death-dodger," Meera says. "I remember. I'm sorry about your dad. And your brother, and your sister and your Ma. Dad'll be sorry too. He loved your folks. Be careful on the road, okay? Your kids can stay here as long as they like, and you're welcome as well."

 

 

 

 

"I'll drive you," Davos says. "You can't drive that far south and back overnight. Not on your own."

_You're not my father_ , she thinks.  
  
"You've already done far too much. Do you think... Can you maybe keep an eye on the dogs while I'm gone? They should be fine but..."  
  
"I'll feed them," Davos says, nodding his grizzly head. "But I stand by what I said..."

"I know I’ve got to take breaks. I'll be okay. Safer on the road than here, anyways."

She turns to Margaery; accepts another hug.

"I'll call you if anything comes up,” Margaery says. “You do the same, okay?"

Sansa nods. She steps back. The boys are already in the car, Bran sitting in front. His chair is packed in the trunk along with bags that she hopes contain more than crisps and a swimming trunk, which is the extent of what Rickon had packed the last time she let him sleep at a friend's.

"Thanks for the gas," she says.

No matter how hard she tries, she can't seem to smile at Davos, not even with a grimace as sad as his own.

 

 

 

 

"Bye, house," Rickon says.

Bran immediately glares at him in the rearview mirror and Rickon doesn't say another word after that, though Sansa sees him cast the house a surreptitious wave, and the dogs follow the car a long way down the road, barking madly, until she takes a turn onto the forest track. Then they stop at the edge of the woods.

For a long time, she can see them whenever she glances in the mirror. A brown shape and a grey shape, getting smaller and smaller, until she can't tell them apart from the rocks and the trees.

 

 

 

 

"I don't want to go to the Reeds' if you're not coming," Bran murmurs, trying to speak low so that Rickon won't hear.

"It's just for a few days. I'll sort this out and then..."

"How?" he snaps, surprisingly harsh. "D'you think you can just make it all go away? How are you gonna do that? With magic? By marrying one of the Freys?"

His gaze travels from her face to her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. "I'll get you to safety first," she says. "I'll sort this out later."

"You think I'm just a kid, but you're just a kid, too, and if you think you're gonna solve everything by going to Roose and offering up your whole life and the woods..."

"I never said I'd do that!"

"You've thought about it, though. And then what, we go live with Jon? D'you really think the Boltons will spare him after what he did? Just because you're pretty and you've got a few good trees..."

"It won't come to that," Sansa assures him. "I have other options. I don't like them either but..."

"Until yesterday we could have razed the woods. Sold off the lot of it. Give them a wilderness. But now it'll be all about vengeance, I guess."

Sansa casts him a worried glance.  
  
"Please, stop thinking about it."  
  
"We're in this together," Bran reminds her.

She stops the car in front of Jon's house. The light is starting to decrease and she experiences a few seconds of chilling dread upon seeing the dark windows, right until she glimpses the thin plume of smoke rising above the chimney.

"You two wait here," she orders.

Ghost rushes outside the moment Jon opens the door, and the dog would have bowled her over if she weren’t so used to his siblings getting underfoot. She sidesteps him and runs up the stairs, throwing herself at Jon with an utter disregard for her resilient bruises.

Jon kisses the top of her head. Seizing a fistful of red hair, he pulls until she lifts her head and meets his eyes.

"That's a hell of a bone-crushing hug.”

"I'm gonna kill you," she vows. "If that's the only claim I got, I'll take it. You stupid... Stupid man."

Jon's smile makes his eyes crinkle. It's irrevocably crooked and the most heartwarming thing she's ever seen.

"You stupid, stupid girl," he retorts, and leans in to kiss her. The slowness of it would make her go mad if he didn't keep touching her hair at the same time, long open-handed strokes like he’s trying to calm down a wary animal.

When they break apart he doesn't draw back immediately, staying in place long enough to murmur, right against her mouth, "I shot him first."

"Of course you did," Sansa mumbles in return, trying to ignore the prickling of her eyes.

Someday, maybe the idea will comfort her. Maybe she'll draw strength from it, recreate it at length and bask in it - Ramsay on the ground, Jon standing over him with the shotgun that killed Robb. Jon dragging the bodies inside the trailer, maybe with some help, so the explosion wouldn’t go off at the wrong time. Theon's sister, or some other fisherman.

It must have been Asha. She's the kind of person can bear a grudge and repay it with fire.

Sansa forces herself to take a step back, letting Jon's hands slide down her arms and his fingers twine with hers. He doesn't look the worse for wear. Not any worse than he usually does, at any rate. She's getting used to the contrast between his dark beard and pale skin, and to the shadows under his grey eyes.

"I'm taking the boys to the Reeds," she says. "You've got to come with us. Lay low while I sort this out."

Jon snorts.

"Yeah, right."

Sansa takes a steadying breath. She reasserts her grip on his hands.

"You have to. I ain’t leaving you here to be shot or beaten to death. You're coming with us. Just for a while."

"I ain’t running away from the Boltons. This is my house. They can come after me if that's what they want - they'll find me waiting, and I won't be alone. But I ain’t gonna run."

The last words are said almost playfully, and the way he squeezes her hands is playful, too, as if this were all some twisted game and he was enjoying it, somehow.

Sansa isn't fooled. The smile he's giving her now isn't happy at all. She knows a ploy when she sees one.

"If you're afraid, you don't have to hide it from me," she whispers. "We can be afraid together." And for a second she sees it, a flash of worry in his haunted eyes.  
  
"When I die, there ain't gonna be any bogus will," he says.

It's a far cry from what she wanted to hear. She drops his hands but can't resign herself to back away, and so she remains where she is, a little too close for a conversation, a little too far for a kiss.

"I've got a lawyer friend, it's all sorted out,” Jon goes on. “The boys get the house and my end of the woods."

"Jon, I don't..."

"You get the money. There's a fucking lot," he says, running a nervous hand through his dark hair. "I never intended to touch it. Targaryen money. Half for you, half for Dany. She’s not gonna swindle you, she's got enough, and I think she doesn't hate you half as much as she pretends to. And I talked to the old bear. Job at the mill's sorted, you can start whenever you like..."

"Jon! I don't give a damn about the money!"

The cursing has him raise his eyebrows, unless it's the shouting. She's not usually prone to either. The nice little bird, the polite Stark. Her mother's daughter.

In truth, all it means is that she swears less often, and that it carries more weight when she does.

"Come," she insists. "It doesn't have to be long. I'll make it so you can come back and they leave you alone."

He cocks his head.

"Your time's running out, isn't it? Maybe you should run, sweetheart. Before they catch up with you."

Sansa takes a staggering step back, torn between punching him and trying to drag his tall body to the car, with what little strength she has in her shaking hands.

"Here," Jon says, and before she can react he's come forward and shoved something down the front pocket of her shirt. "That's the picture you wanted."

Closed hand tipping up her chin, he delivers the death knell with a cutting smile.

"My girl, my girl. Where will you go? I've loved you like a man gone mad, you gotta know that."

 

 

 

 

"It's not your fault," Bran says.

"Might as well have tried to move one of the mountains," he tries again, a few minutes later, when she hasn't answered and her sniffling has become impossible to ignore, even in the back of the car where Rickon is sitting up with wide, worried eyes.

And when that doesn't get any reaction either, he puts his hand on her leg and leaves it there, a steady weight that serves to anchor her even as she continues to cry.

 

 

 

 

This takes them as far as the highway. She drives a half hour in relative silence, with only the sound of her sniffling for company, until Bran pulls out a tissue from the glove compartment and holds it up so she can blow her nose.

Throughout it all and despite her distress she doesn't stop thinking and thinking and trying to find a way out, and they haven't been driving twenty miles on the highway that she's switching onto the exit ramp and parking the car into the first rest area they come across.

"What are you doing?" Bran asks.

She knows he doesn't mean to question her judgment, that he's only trying to help, but there's no way she'll share her brand new resolution with him.

"I just need a minute."

She steps away from the car and goes to sit on top of the nearest picnic table, pulling her legs to her chest. If there were any cigarettes left in Robb's pockets, she'd be smoking them. As it is, she pulls out the folded slip of paper that Jon gave her.

It's a picture, with a phone number scrawled onto the back. When she unfolds it, she recognizes the front porch of the house.

She has a distinct memory of that day. It'd been raining and Robb had wanted to capture toads, to play a trick on Bran. Put one in his bed, maybe. She can't remember how that panned out, but she'd been reluctant to go, until Arya made fun of her, and they all ran off into the forest, screaming at the top of their lungs as the hard spring rain pelted their skulls. The picture was taken later, she can't remember by who. Her mother had made fun of them, though. She'd had a good laugh over the whole thing.

On the picture they're sitting on the porch steps, drenched to the bone. There were other pictures taken that day - there's one of Robb brandishing a toad that made it onto the wall of the living room. But this one is just Jon and her, when she was still a skinny girl and he was still a surly boy. Just looking at it she can almost taste the rain, feel the heavy press of it on her shoulders, the stickiness of her t-shirt and blue jeans.

They're staring at the camera with equal expressions of displeasure, annoyed to have been caught in the middle of a sulking match.

Sansa presses the sides of the picture together again, forcing their fumbling teenage selves together.

Fingers shaking slightly, she pulls out her phone.

First she tries the number on the back of the picture. Jon must have left it here for her, otherwise he'd have crossed it out.

She lets it ring a dozen times or so, until the voicemail takes over. _You have reached number..._ She has a split second of hesitation, but it seems like there's no time to waste.

"Hello, this is Sansa Stark. I've been... Jon gave me this number. He's in trouble and if you could help me... I'll give you my number."

She has to hang up, jot down the number of her cell phone and call again, but still no one answers, and so she waits for the voicemail once more and this time she dictates her number, twice for good measure.

She doesn't hesitate before calling Petyr next. He'd saved his number into the phone but she types it from memory, maybe because it forces her to take stock of what she's doing, rather than to go about it in a blind panic.

He answers on the third ring, and under his ever-pleasant tone, she can hear the slightest of pants, as if he'd run to get to the phone in time.

"Sansa. How are you, my dear?"  
  
She folds her hand over the picture, inhales deeply, and takes the plunge.

"I need your help."


	18. Timber

She wakes up at an odd hour, in a bed that smells like wet dog, her cheek tucked against a soft, furry flank.

"Get off the bed," she tells Shaggydog in a murmur.

The dog clambers off and she follows suit, rather slowly, swinging her legs down for a start as she tries to adjust to the empty room and to the pale morning light. It looks like dust, thick and grey, and she rubs her arms reflexively, as if to wipe it off her skin.

She can’t remember the particulars of her dream but she knows it was about Ramsay again. Ramsay and teeth and ashes in her mouth... Something pushing the ashes into her mouth, Ramsay’s tongue or his fingers. Before she can recall any more of it she’s rushing to the bathroom and turning on the faucet. For several long seconds she tries to rinse her cottony mouth.

Whatever woke her up, she’s grateful for it - and as the thought takes shape inside her mind, she realizes it was her phone.

She came home at three in the morning and went to bed with it, out of some strenuous fear that either Margaery or Petyr would try to call her. Margaery with terrible news about Jon - Petyr with terrible news about how he couldn’t, in fact, help Jon.

On the way back she’d considered going to Jon’s instead of her house, sneaking past Ghost and into Jon’s bed, but she was afraid he’d see right through her. Maybe not in the middle of the night; maybe he’d have gathered her in his arms and gone straight back to sleep. Later in the morning, however... She looks into the dirty mirror above the sink and she can see it in her face.

_I’ve been making bargains with the devil._

It might be something of an exaggeration. Petyr is hardly evil, though he is calculating and selfish. She doubts Jon would approve, however. Maybe she shouldn’t have told him about Petyr at all. She’d found it exhilarating at the time - taunting him with the knowledge that Petyr wanted her. It had seemed as good a way as any to draw him out.

She goes back to her room and fishes the phone from among the covers. Indeed she’s received a message a few minutes ago, though it’s hardly what she expected.

_9.12 > Hi Sansa its Harry. We met at the bar the other day when I was going to the mountains with my friends. Shae gave me your nb. How r u_

She stares at the phone. For a moment she’s almost tempted to answer.

_Hi, Harry. I’m raising my two younger brothers and I’d like to know where my sister’s gone to. My aunt’s husband wants to screw me but maybe it’ll help me save my cousin, because he just blew up a meth lab to rid me of a dangerous creep. You’re handsome and maybe we’d have fun. But your eyes ain’t sad enough and your legs ain’t long enough and I want my fun to look and taste like the man I’m about to lose. Bye, have a good life, Sansa._

Before she can decide whether she wants to answer or not, the phone buzzes again. This time, the message is from Petyr.

_9.28 > I’m parked outside._

 

 

 

 

She almost reaches for Robb’s jacket as she’s about to leave the house, but decides against it. The jacket is armor and this isn’t the image that she wants to project right now, not if she wants Petyr to help her.

When she joins him in the car, ten minutes at most after she got his message, she’s wearing one of her mother’s old skirts, long and green, tied snugly around the waist with a leather belt. She’s left her hair loose, in a coppery tumble around her shoulders.

“Did you get some sleep?” Petyr asks.

“Some.”

“Good.”

He must have driven through the night, too. Within the confines of the car, she can smell the coffee on his breath. His grey-brown hair is a little mussed. What hairspray there is in it, making certain strands spike up over his collar, must be from the day before. He’s still very well dressed, though. They both took time to think about that, it seems. She recognizes the dark grey slacks. It’s the ones he wore when he told her to meet him during his lunch break, outside a tall chrome-plated building. She never got to find out whether he actually worked there, or if he’d just picked the spot because it made him look good, all those silver and black surfaces that caught the light, and never let it out.

He’s looking out the window at the woods. He seems in no hurry to speak. Maybe he wants her to remember, to keep walking backwards into the memories of that day in the city, as she sat beside him on the edge of a fountain with his hand on her leg.

Maybe he’s waiting for her to ask him questions, hoping she’ll give in. And maybe she would have, but he breaks the silence first.

“It’s done.”

He drops a white folder into her lap. Sansa quickly flips it open, eyes skimming over the contents. _Warranty Deed_ , the first page reads, and then it starts listing the details of the transaction, all the names and sums and addresses filled in by Petyr’s meticulous hand.

“I took the liberty of writing it all out. Naturally, it’s legally sound.”

“You managed to find a notary in the middle of the night,” Sansa notes, as she peers at the last page.

“Not exactly. I prefer being prepared, I had the papers drafted a few days back. What I _did_ do since you called, apart from bringing these over, was place a call to Bolton. Make sure he’d receive you. He assured me he would. Do you want me to come with you?”

Sansa shakes her head.

“You shouldn’t have called. You shouldn’t even have come here. You’ve already done too much.”

Petyr has a quick smile, just the corner of his mouth lifting, as if to say, _With what I’ve already done, what’s one thing more or less? You’re already lost._

“Can I drive you, at least?”  
  
“No, I have a car now.”  
  
The look Petyr gives her is worryingly compassionate.

“I suppose,” he muses, “that it’s rather like finding out that a hunter’s been laying traps in the forest. You can rush out and try to find your dog, but if he’s been thrashing... If it’s poison... I can only do so much.”

“I can tell you’re trying to speak my language,” Sansa says, unimpressed. “I’m sorry but I still don’t get it.”

“I’ll speak plain, then,” Petyr shrugs. “I’m giving you the means to make your peace with Bolton, but it won’t work if your cousin decides to wave a gun at him. You have to keep that rabid boy in check.”

Sansa makes an exasperated sound, closer to the warning hiss of a snake than to anything quite human.

“A few months in this desert and the veneer of the city wears off, doesn’t it?” Petyr smiles. “You’re back to being the wild thing we picked up from the airport last June. The tangled hair, the ratty clothes.” He twists a strand of red hair around his fingers, his thumb smoothing out the many split ends. “I remember this skirt. Cat used to wear it. It’s a nice touch.”

Gathering the folder to her chest, Sansa reaches for the door handle. Petyr stops her with a hand on her shoulder - it’s far from being a restraining grip and she could evade it if she tried, but then again that’s the way it’s always been between them. He never went too far. She suspects it’s not so much guilt as a means to trick and tame her. A touch and the hand is gone, a kiss where the mouth doesn’t linger, and soon enough you’re pushing back, trying to get more, to finish the aborted gesture, even if it’s just for the sake of it.

“I’ll wait for you at the house, alright?” he smiles. “If that’s what you want.”

When she steps out of the car and turns back to slam the door closed, she gets a last glimpse of his face. He doesn’t look half as confident as she thought he would have. In fact he looks worried, and it’s on the tip of her tongue to ask him what it is that’s made his eyes shine and his mouth freeze in that strained smile.

Is it that he can feel that he’s lost her, and that no matter what happens - no matter the size of the contracted debt - she won’t receive his attentions as readily as she once did?

Or is it that he has doubts that his plan will work, and that he knows he’s sending her into the lion’s den with only a piece of paper as a shield?

 

 

 

 

_And what if Roose Bolton kills me once I’ve given him the deed ?_

If so, Jon will soon follow. But the boys might be safe.

Meera Reed didn’t ask how long Sansa meant for them to stay. She’d smiled at the boys and ushered them in, stepping behind Bran’s chair and maneuvering it up the two porch steps. The Reed house wasn’t much, a single shotgun with sheet metal over the roof. The inside was barely any better, what Sansa saw of it at any rate. But it looked lived in. Meera’s beanpole of a brother Jojen showed them a collection of books that Bran took to at once, all of them in plastic covers (“so they don’t get too wet when we go fishing”). On a shelf in the living-room, there was a picture of the Starks, or at least, what Starks there were fifteen years ago, before Rickon was born. It felt strange to look at the picture, as if for the Reeds, Sansa’s family is still what it was then, two parents and four children and Jon off to the side of the picture, hands in the pockets of his ripped jeans.

Sansa had felt a strong kinship with Meera. It wouldn’t have been the case if they’d met two of three weeks ago. With her dark unkempt hair and the frankness of her brown eyes and her outspoken words, Meera reminds her of her sister. But as Sansa’s starting to realize, she has more in common with Arya than she thought. The younger Sansa, the Sansa before the Boltons and Petyr and the constant threat of losing it all like a loaded gun to her head - this Sansa would never have taken pride in her old house and her newfound resilience.

“You could stay too, if you’d like,” Meera had said, as Jojen plopped a book in Bran’s lap with promises of knight-priests and mountains full of treasure.

Rickon was already in the backyard, climbing up one of the old cypress trees. Sansa kept an eye on him through the window, making sure he followed Meera’s warning. _Stay away from the grass, because it’s not grass, it’s water._

There are swamps all around the Reeds’ place, but they aren’t like Theon’s swamps. The air is warmer south where the Reeds live, whereas it can be cutting and cold in the desert of the Greyjoy wetlands. As Meera walked Sansa back to the car, forcing a cup of coffee in her hands and slipping a brand new pack of cigarettes in the front pocket of her shirt, Sansa had taken a deep breath and she’d found it hard to clear her head. She’d longed for the wetlands then, for their treacherous quiet.

Whatever gives her strength now, she might as well use it, and so as she drives up the winding road towards the trailer park, she pictures herself back in Jon’s truck as they made their way to the swamps. Theon is driving, gaunt hands veined with blue, fingers clenched upon the wheel, and Jon sits beside her, holding her close with the gun balanced upon her knee.

In this daydream there’s nobody in the backseat, no fretting dog. There’s only the rumble of the truck above the quiet of the empty road, and that soft huffing sound whenever Theon remembers to smile.

 

 

 

 

She drives past the Hornwoods’ old house, still all shuttered up, the grass growing wild around the brick foundations. At every bend she thinks, _Here. That’s where Ramsay jumped at me._

But the truth is, she can’t be sure. Everywhere it’s the same ditch and the same gnarled trees. _Ramsay’s dead,_ she reminds herself. It’s Roose Bolton that she should be thinking about now. She’s met him several times. He’s from the same neck of the woods as her father, or maybe they worked together for a time, or maybe both. They had friends in common and for a while after Ned died, Roose kept sending a bottle to the family for Christmas, something homemade and vile that Sansa was never allowed to taste but that she did try out, once, when Jon pretended to forget his glass on the kitchen counter.

For a long time, she thought he was a friend of her mother’s, though she has to sift through her memories in order to remember why. They used to stand together, her mother and Bolton, side by side at the back of gatherings or under the diffuse porch light with a mug of beer. It might not have been friendship but simply two quiet, clever people banding together.

She wonders if Roose was the one to kill her mother - if he was the one to shoot Robb, right in front of her. Maybe he’d been planning this for a while. On the day she saw him stand beside Catelyn at the back of the town hall... His own wedding day. He’d preferred to merge with the walls rather than to dance with his new wife. Was he already thinking about it then? Looking at Catelyn and seeing not the woman he knew, a strong-willed widow with hair the color of rust, but the woods in her, beckoning to him. And so Roose called in Ramsay from wherever he’d been hiding him, and he struck a deal with the Freys.

The Freys are greedy, but they’re not clever men. Roose must have been the one to think it through.

Looking down on the Starks from his mountaintop. Looking at them through the sights of a loaded gun.

 

 

 

 

Sansa decides to drive straight to his house, rather than to park the car below the trailer park. It seems safer, though it hardly makes it a pleasant drive. Even in the car she feels watched, and it’s only now - admittedly a little late - that she remembers Myranda, who’d cared so little about what Roose or Ramsay’s orders might be when she beat her up.

She parks the car in Roose’s yard, next to a half-dismembered truck. The walk to the door takes a toll on her, forcing her to fight against her every instinct. There’s the long crossing of the yard, treading on concrete slabs and on the weeds that have sprouted out of the cracks, and then she has to climb the porch steps, despite the dogs barking inside. She’s uncomfortably aware that she’s got herself cornered, by the house in front and the trailers beneath and the barbed wire fence at her back. The fence marks the end of the Boltons’ land and the start of the Karstarks’. The Karstarks have been friends of the Starks in the past, but they’ve also been friends of the Boltons, and she wouldn’t bet her life on the area where these two allegiances overlap.

Step after step, it’s the thought of Jon that keeps her going. Much like she had in the woods as she searched for Ghost, she finds herself whispering under her breath.

“Be alive, be alive, be alive”.

 

 

 

 

She expects Walda Bolton to come to the door, and she’s more than a little taken aback when it’s Roose himself who answers. He’s not a tall man, but he’s got eyes that more than make up for it. Light grey, of a kind that puts you ill-at-ease for how far they seem to see, and not stone-like but luminous, like Ramsay’s had been. Sansa shifts uncomfortably, trying not to step back.

Apart from the eyes, there’s nothing remarkable about Bolton. He’s a man of the mountains like her father had been, lean and grey and long-faced, the forehead high under the thinning hair, the stubble slowly turning to snow. His eyes stand out because his eyebrows are still a dark brown, and the contrast would make him look severe even without the tight-lipped scowl.

“Come in,” he says.

Sansa might have refused if she thought being outside was any safer than following him indoors. As it is, she knows she won’t make it ten feet before something knocks her down, man, dog, bullet or moving car.

So when he steps aside, she walks past him and inside the house.

The hall is dark and cluttered, but not in the way the Stark house is cluttered. It looks dead, despite or because of what few attempts Walda Bolton made to make it seem hospitable. Crocheted table sets and a vase of garishly-green flowers. A pink furry lampshade. The rest is moth-eaten trophies and ragged carpets and dark wooden walls, and a smell coming from the other end of the house that Sansa doesn’t care to identify.

“We shot a wolf last night,” Roose says. His voice is and isn’t like Ramsay’s, soft as well but deeper, with vibrations underneath like you’d feel stepping on unstable ground. He gestures towards the other end of the corridor; lets his hand fall down. “That’s what the smell is. Dead wolf. In here.”

It takes Sansa a second to understand that he’s showing her into the living room, and not into the room where they’ve put the wolf.

If it is indeed a wolf, and not Ghost - or Jon, and the thought has her stagger back, blinking against a vision of blood and glassy grey eyes.

Roose Bolton clears the sofa for her and Sansa perches at the very edge of it, despite the fact that the seat is covered with an old hide, stained in places. Roose is wearing hunting gear. As he takes the armchair opposite her, Sansa’s eyes drift down, and she notices blood on his hands. He follows her gaze and raises his eyebrows as if the sight is also surprising to him. Pulling a rag from his jacket, he uses it to wipe his fingers.

“You have something for me.”  
  
“On the condition that you leave us alone.”  
  
“I’ll leave you alone,” Roose says, voice level. “If you give me the land.”

“Not just me,” Sansa insists, hands gripping her knees. She tries to resist the part of her that would rather spring from the sofa and run for the door, satisfied with this partial victory. “You’ll leave my brothers and my cousin alone, or the deal is off. My uncle can make sure it vanishes.” Squaring her shoulders, she makes a point to look him straight in the eye. “If you hurt Jon, I’ll burn the woods down. You won’t get a tree. I swear it.”

Roose holds her gaze, and he’s doesn’t smile, but he looks eerily like his son in this moment. Like he would gladly sink his teeth into her, shake his head and jolt her about, like one of these dogs that doesn’t realize that the playful bite has turned into a gaping wound.

Her skin prickles with goose bumps. In her head it’s a loud, ringing warning. _Danger. Get out._

“If you hold your end of the bargain, no one else needs to get hurt,” Roose says softly. “I’d like to know how your uncle came about a good wood on such short notice. Who did he have to kill?”

Sansa pulls the deed out of Robb’s jacket.  
  
“No one. Some of us try to avoid killing people.”

In truth, she’s not sure Petyr’s techniques are any better. _I found you a wood to give to the Boltons._ He’d been rather evasive when answering her questions. _Expropriation,_ he’d said. _Generous compensation._

And to be fully honest, she didn’t exactly press him for details. He’d found a wood, it belonged to no one and so it could be given to the Boltons, her family would be safe. She didn’t spare a second to think about the people he must have swindled.

“The wood’s after Exit 21, after the old water mill. The mill’s part of the land too.”

“I know. I drove there when your uncle called. I wasn’t about to agree to a deal without seeing the damn trees.”

For the first time, he sounds impatient, and it spurs her to hand over the deed. She hasn’t seen the woods herself; she hasn’t had the time, so she’ll have to trust Petyr that they’re a good replacement for the Stark forest. Judging from the way Roose handles the deed, careful as he unfolds and reads it and then secures it inside his jacket, it seems Petyr did his part.

“We’re agreed, then,” Sansa says, her voice betraying her hesitation.

A door opens elsewhere in the house and they hear the braying of an animal. The screaming sounds deceptively human. Roose gives a sniff, a second or two before the smell reaches her, metallic and gut-churning.

“As long as you keep your dog muzzled,” he says.

It’s rather plain that he’s not talking about an actual dog. Sansa gives a curt nod.

Roose shrugs, hands coming down upon his knees as he prepares to rise.

“Then we’re done here.”

At first, Sansa doesn’t dare move. It can’t be this simple. There has to be something she forgot, some promise she should have extracted from him, some line that she missed in the fine print.

While Roose stands by the door, scowl deepening as he waits for her to move, she tries to run through everything that Petyr told her on the phone the previous night.

_I found you a wood to give to the Boltons. The forest is bigger than yours. The deed will give him full ownership, to him and his children after him... Now, this might smart at first, given his recent loss._

“Are you waiting for me to change my mind?” Bolton asks, pleasantly enough.

_Like father, like son._

Sansa quickly walks past him and once she’s through the door, she runs down the stairs and doesn’t look back.

It’s not until she’s driven past the trailer park that she manages to draw in a steady breath. Even then, she keeps checking the rearview mirror, expecting a car or truck or even just a running dog.

And the farther she gets from the Boltons’, the more indecisive she becomes.

Where to go? To Jon’s? She longs for it, for a warm homecoming and a night spent sleeping between Jon and Ghost, an arm thrown over each. But Jon will have questions, and he won’t like her answers. Even if he lets her come near he’ll be rigid as a board, his angry eyes a faint reminiscence of Robb’s thunderous sulks.

Back home, then? But Petyr will be there, and what if he decides to collect his due?

It takes some time for the decision to emerge, and when it does, it’s a mix of exhaustion and practicality.

_I need to make damn sure they can’t get to me anymore. And I need arms to hold me._


	19. Better Dig Two

“How did it go? Are you alright? _Where_ are you?”

“I’m fine,” she says, as she taps the heel of her boot against the asphalt, trying to dislodge a chunk of wet mud and grass.

Ahead of her the water stretches out, undisturbed but for the animals calling to each other among the reeds. She watches an osprey dive towards the pond, and as it rises with a powerful beat of its brown and white wings, she catches a glimpse of the silvery fish thrashing within its grasp. Realizing that she’s timed her breathing with the bird’s wings, she tries to slow it down, matching the unhurried pace of the wetlands.

There are worse burial grounds than these still waters.

“Then it’s over,” Petyr says. “You’re safe. You should...”

“You should go home.” Craning her neck, she looks up at the cotton-wool sky. “I’ll call you.”

There’s a silence at the other end of the line.

“I don’t mind staying,” he says, eventually. “Work can wait.”

“I’ll call you,” she repeats. “I’ll call you soon. There’s things I’ve got to deal with first... But thank you. For what you did.”

“You’re welcome,” Petyr says, and she thinks she detects the barest hint of annoyance in his tone.

 _You’ve got to deal with this sooner rather than later,_ she thinks, _or he’ll turn against you fast. People can say what they want about women scorned. Is there anything more dangerous than a man convinced that he deserves you and your body and your blind adoration?_

“I won’t forget,” she assures him before hanging up.

It’s the best she can do at present. He might have expected more fawning or at least more details about what he’ll get in return for his help, but her nerves are frayed and his mind games are the last thing she needs after her trip to the Boltons. It would be like choosing a mud bath instead of a shower after a swim through a polluted stream.

 

 

 

 

The Greyjoys used to own a good portion of the river hereabouts. It’s been bought up by big city firms, though, and while the Greyjoys still have a right of way and most of their fishing permits, it’s hardly their land anymore. The small houses built right above the water will have to go someday. Some of them are already falling apart, and every other week a construction crew fishes one out of the river. They were colorful once but the colors have faded, apple green turning into olive, the bright red of fresh blood drying into dull, flaky rust.

Sansa doesn’t know which house belongs to Theon and Asha, but it turns out not to matter, because she spots Theon before she’s even got within range of reading the label on the first rusted mailbox. He’s sitting in a boat in the middle of the river, cross-legged on the bench, peering at the water below. It doesn’t look like he’s fishing, though he’s got the equipment at hand: a bucket by his feet, and the fishing rod lying across his knees.

She walks over to the shore, slipping in between the walls of two houses, sidestepping broken traps and crates and bits of corroded machinery. There’s a pier further upriver but where she stands, it’s just the muddy grass falling straight into the brownish water.

Theon raises his head and suddenly he’s shoving the rod off his knees and turning on the motor, probably scaring off every fish in a five-mile radius. The river’s not that wide, but it’s wide enough that whenever Robb said he was going to Theon’s, their mother would remind him to be careful and not to swim too far away from the banks. They’ve been dyked up too many times and now the water’s eating the ground from beneath, boring holes under the dykes, and sometimes a chunk of grass falls in and sometimes it’s a house. Unstable ground and treacherous waters - every comparison to the Greyjoys’ many unreliable traits has been made a thousand times over. In the valley everyone knows that one day the wetlands will claim the fishermen like the fishermen once claimed the wetlands. You can’t build a home on a swamp and expect it to last.

Theon doesn’t say a word as he kills off the motor and holds out his hands to her. He looks tired and grim and it cuts her deep, this silent reminder of all the things that they’ve lost. She gets onto the boat and sits down and Theon starts the motor again. The ominous row of floating porches and ramshackle houses begins to grow smaller and smaller, and then the boat rounds a bend and they disappear.

Sitting with her hands tucked between her knees, Sansa lets the sound of the motor drown her thoughts. She watches the landscape go by, the houses and the dead fields and then the forests that aren’t quite forests, half-submerged in water. Bald cypresses and tupelos, the trunks reaching so far high that she’d have to lie down to see the tops. _Trees that look like witches,_ Robb used to say, to Arya or to her. _They’re crouching in the water, their skin’s all wrinkled. And if you come too close..._ And he jumped with his hands extended, and started to tickle...

Arya, she remembers, suddenly. Arya and it wasn’t Robb, it was Jon. It’s Jon’s voice that she hears, softer than Robb’s, better at telling stories.

Theon turns off the motor again, and the boat comes to a stuttering stop between the trees. They’re no longer on the main river, though Sansa couldn’t say if this is a tributary or just a tree-filled pond. Theon moves around some, stacking a bucket full of fishing gear under a bench and securing the rod along the side of the boat. He retrieves a bottle from under the middle bench and then comes to join her, with the bottle in one hand and his cigarettes in the other. He puts them down between them in a silent offering.

“How’s my favorite Stark?”  
  
“I’m not your favorite Stark,” Sansa scoffs.

Theon shrugs.

“You are now.”

She almost slaps him - considers it, the closeness of his pale cheek making it all the more difficult to resist. Instead she reaches for the cigarettes, pulls one out and lets him light it for her, blowing the first puff of smoke on his proffered hand.

“Thanks,” Theon says. “For blowing up Ramsay. I appreciate it.”

Sansa huffs and promptly freezes, realizing that she’s stolen the move from Jon. The scornful sound and the brief rise of the shoulders that goes along with it; the hand lifting the cigarette in a discreet “fuck you”.

“You’re safe, at any rate.” Theon picks up the bottle, twists the metal lid open with a screech. “That’s something, ain’t it?”

“It’s never gonna be about me,” Sansa says, voicing thoughts that she hasn’t yet had the opportunity to share, or even to put into words. “There’s always gonna be someone else... Another child. Another thing that I’ve got to protect. It’s never gonna be about me, is it?”

Theon gives it some thought, or maybe he just needs time to enjoy his moonshine. If the alcohol is on par with the grimy, mossy bottle, it’s unlikely to be any healthier than the Boltons’ crank.

“Maybe not when this all started out,” Theon says, putting the bottle back down. “But you’re calling the shots now, as far as I can tell. It’s like you’ve decided you wanted this house and Jon in it and God helps the dumb idiot that tries getting in your way. You’ve always been like that, though. You always got what you wanted, even as a kid.”

“That’s not true.”  
  
“Yeah?” He cracks a grin. “That rocking horse, when you were what, six? Seven?”

“Oh God,” she mutters. “Don’t...”

“You cried and cried for days. Cat wouldn’t have it, but your dad snapped, in the end. Fuck, you were loud. And that time you decided you’d be the one to go with Robb to that high school dance, even though...”

“Fine. I get it.”

“And instead of dancing he spent the night pacing around you, making sure none of the boys could get within ten feet.”

Sansa’s fingers tighten around the cigarette. She waits but Theon doesn’t go on, instead taking another swig of the bottle. It falls to her to find the words to prolong the conversation.

“Tell me something else,” she says, because she’s too tired for finesse. “Something I don’t know... Something about him and you.”

“Why? Because you think it’ll make you feel better?” He sounds dismissive, faintly angry.

“Maybe it will!” After a pause, she adds, rather nastily, “You owe me this much.”  
  
Theon gives her a look that makes it clear what he thinks of such tactics.  
  
“What d’you want to hear? That me and your brother used to...”

He halts abruptly, whether it’s because of her wounded look, or because he’s been hit by a memory. She’s got an inkling what that might feel like. It’s happened to her way too often over the past few months.

“It’s easy, afterwards, to just keep the good,” he says. “You know it wasn’t all good. Most of it wasn’t, in fact.”

“Don’t you think we deserve the good, though?” Sansa asks timidly.

Theon sighs. “You do. If it was up to me, you’d get that house with a fresh coat of paint, and the entire woods, and so much money you wouldn’t know what to do with it. I’d start by buying you an actual fucking coat.”

“I don’t want a coat!” It might not be the perpetual truth, but right now she means it. “Tell me something that...”

“Your mother knew.”

“What?”

“She pretended, of course.” He pulls out a cigarette. “Robb left the window open every night. Cat complained about the drafts. Robb never closed it because it squeaked and it kept squeaking even after he’d oiled it. You’d have had to replace the whole frame and your parents couldn’t afford that... New windows. So he left it open...” Theon lights the cigarette, takes a careful drag. “I came in every night, and your Ma pretended she didn’t know when I came round to knock on the front door in the morning. Gave Robb the mug of coffee so he could bring it over to me. There’s a few times when she brought it out herself.”

It’s on the tip of Sansa’s tongue to protest. If her mother knew, and did not speak against it, then why would she have supported that deal with the Freys?

There is a distinct possibility, however, that Cat did speak against it and that Robb didn’t listen. Sansa can’t think that her mother would have approved - she never approved of Theon and she wouldn’t have approved of him sneaking into Robb’s bed night after night. What must have happened is that she’d tried to help her son, in spite of it all. Backing him when he secured the deal, and then when he decided to walk away to marry Jeyne. Trying to weather it all, each and every one of Robb’s bad decisions.

In retrospect, Theon clearly wasn’t the worst he’d made.

“I heard you a few times,” she says, flicking her cigarette end among the eelgrass and the reeds. “You’re lucky it was our room next to Robb’s, and not mom and dad’s.”

Theon chokes on his mouthful of smoke.

“You knew?” he sputters, once he’s done coughing.

“Not that it was you, no.” Sansa leans over the edge of the boat, fingers stroking the eelgrass where it sways under the ice-cold water. “I figured he’d brought some girl home.”

“Well, this is awkward,” Theon snorts. He pulls out two more cigarettes and cups his hands around her mouth as she lights hers so the flame won’t go out.

They don’t speak for a moment, watching the water break softly against the boat. Sansa doesn’t know how to ask for a hug and she doesn’t dare take it for herself, as she might have with Jon, so she just smokes a little more insistently, and holds her cigarette with a little more force, looking straight ahead at the cracked grey trunks.

“Robb was Robb,” Theon says at last, stubbing his cigarette in a mossy jar that he’s fished from under the bench. “It doesn’t matter that there’s things you didn’t know about him. He’s one of these people, what you got on the surface was the real thing. And that’s rare, right? That kind of honesty.”

Sansa has a brief laugh. “You’re nice to call it honesty.”

“He could be naive, sure. But he was still so fucking real, all the time.”

She pretends not to see that his hand is shaking as it reaches for the bottle.

“Let me have some,” she decides.

Theon passes it over wordlessly and she has a swig of the foggy liquid. It feels like she imagines drinking acid might feel - burning a line of fire through her throat that she’s certain will leave holes in its wake. But it serves its purpose. It distracts her, scorches the doubts and the guilt and the sorrow, leaving only a vague dreaminess in its wake.

 

 

 

 

On the way back she stares at the trees above, and she can almost picture herself climbing, up and up, scrambling away from the green syrupy waters until she can find a way out of the swamps, and onwards into the pale white sky.

 

 

 

 

Theon jumps out of the boat ahead of her and turns back to help her out. She accepts his hands, tries to follow gracefully but her foot slips on the wet grass and she stumbles. To prevent a fall she latches onto his sweater, unless it’s him who moves forward to steady her.

She doesn’t let go. Plants her feet in the mud and stares at his chest until he gets the idea and brings his arms up around her. It takes a while, but eventually he does, with a dry chuckle.

“What, you had to come all this way for a hug? From what I saw, Snow couldn’t keep his hands off you.”

The smell of moonshine clings to his clothes, making her throat clench, and she can feel his ribs even through the thick sweater. But the grin in his voice takes her years back, to lazy summer evenings on the porch, to her scraped knees and to the boys kicking an old ball through the knee-high weeds. Robb’s bouncing shadow would disappear under the trees, way out of reach of the moonlight, because Theon or Jon had kicked the ball too hard.

To her own dismay, she begins to cry, noisily, with her face all scrunched up and her heart pelting itself against her ribcage like it wants bruises of its own.

Theon makes a startled sound, but he doesn’t let go of her. Instead he strokes her hair, and tucks her hips into his with a steady arm at her waist. All the while, he keeps up a continuous stream of mumbled nonsense against her ear. White lightning on his breath, sweet poison on his tongue.

“There, there, you’re alright. You’re alright. It’s all over now. You’re safe. No one’ll hurt you here.”

Eventually, she stops crying. The sounds of the river begin to reach her again. The high chirping of a stranded bird, the slapping of water breaking against the hull of the boat and the gentle knock of objects bumping together on the deck. Close by, behind the houses, a dog begins to bark. She hears the rumble of a truck coming up the dirt road.

Wherever she goes, it seems like there’s always the sound of someone coming home, close enough to be heard but not necessarily seen, like a discrete but persistent taunt.

_Why can’t it be me? Why can’t I be the boots stomping on the front porch and the smell of warm food and the dog rushing to squeeze his way past you through the door?_

She wipes her nose on her cuff, gives another sniff and peers above his shoulder at the small wooden house with its wraparound porch.

“That your house?”  
  
Theon makes a noncommittal grunt.  
  
“You don’t live alone, right? Asha’s taking care of you.”  
  
His silent fit of laughter rattles her bones. He draws back slightly to peer at her tear-stricken face. “If that’s what you want to call it. Taking care of me. God.”

“Can I come in?” Sansa asks, shyly, like she has no desire to push it, though she knows that she must. She needs Asha to be within earshot when she springs upon Theon the question that she’s come here to ask.

Theon shrugs. “Sure. It’s not much, but you know. Make yourself at home and all.”

It’s almost enough to make her reconsider. Not so much the words as the way he says them, deceptively casual, the frailty close at hand beneath the false cheer.

But she can’t see any other way, so she follows him anyways, up the steps and inside the house.

 

 

 

 

The Greyjoy siblings seem to be living one on top of the other. There’s only two rooms in the house, and Sansa can embrace them at a glance from the doorway. A bedroom, the sheets trailing upon the floor and black combat boots sinking in on themselves beside the bed, Asha’s or Theon’s. And in the main room, a corner transformed into a makeshift kitchen, with a portable stove and a wide bucket for a sink, a table covered in fishing gear and magazines and cans filled to the brim with loose change and rusted cutlery and cigarette ends. A couch that seems to double as a dresser, with the springs showing in between the piles of tangled clothes. There’s a poster of some metal band on one wall, a framed picture of the wetlands on the other, the sun showing through the trees, sending ripples of light across the green waters.

“Is this your childhood home?” she asks, perching herself at the edge of a chair. There’s a hole in the middle of the seat, with wisps of straw jutting every which way.

“No.”

He throws an old blanket across her knees (“You stay sitting here two minutes, you’ll turn into an ice cube”) and he goes to fiddle with the stove. Sansa fists her hands in the blanket. There must have been a print on it at some point, something yellow and large and sprawling, but it’s dissolved into a flurry of soft curling threads.

“You know if I ever had a childhood home, it was your house,” Theon says, interrupting her frantic search for a new subject of conversation.

Sansa shoots him a surprised look. Before she can say anything, he’s handed her a tissue with a stern order to, “Blow your nose, kid,” and she obeys without thinking, bunching up the tissue between her hands once she’d done, holding on to it like it might serve as an anchor.

They hear another car or truck coming up the road. Theon perks up. In the stark winter light, he looks like a picture or a drawing, charcoal and a little blurred, the edges smudged in smoke.

“That’ll be Ash,” he says.

Sansa jolts as if she’d received an electric shock.

“Theon.”

_Now, speak now._

“We’re gonna need chains, the road was...”

Asha stops when she’s already halfway inside the room, her arms laden with grocery bags. She exchanges a look with Theon and returns her gaze to Sansa, her dark eyes narrowed.

“Well. Look what the cat dragged in.”

Theon hastens forward to help her with the bags. Sansa shifts uncomfortably under Asha’s hard stare, both hands closed tight around her crumpled tissue. She must look a fright, red-eyed and red-nosed with her remaining bruises painting a side of her face a deep purple.

“I’m gonna go,” she says. “Theon, I just need to ask you something first.”

Theon looks up from the bags that he’d started to empty on the fold-out table. Sansa catches a glimpse of potatoes and carrots and of a pack of toothbrushes and it makes her throat clench.

“What d’you need?” he asks.

Not just _What. What do you need,_ like he’s at her service, like he’ll do anything she needs him to. The faster she gets this done, the sooner she’ll be able to retreat to the car, and then, when she’s driven away and she’s far enough that they can no longer see her, she’ll be able to cry all she wants.

“Ramsay told me something,” she says. “Before he died, he came to the bar, he said... he said we should have checked. That there wasn’t anything missing.”

“Missing,” Theon repeats, and she can tell that he doesn’t get it, at first, and it makes it all the more terrifying a few seconds later, when he finally does. It’s as if she could see his skull beneath the papery skin. He’s looking at her but it’s likely that he can't see her. Asha has to walk over and pry the groceries from his hands.

“Why,” Asha says, voice taut like a bowstring. Sansa rounds her shoulders on instinct, as if Asha’s very tone might deal her a blow. “Why would they need to keep something? It’s just gonna be incriminating.”

“If they can prove he’s dead, they can still use the will,” Sansa says. “If they kept his fingers or his teeth, it’d be enough for...”

“His fingers or his teeth,” Theon says in a wheezy rattle. “Fuck. Fucking hell.”

“He didn’t tell you about it, then. Ramsay. When he told you where they’d buried him, he didn’t say that...”

“No, Sansa,” Theon snaps, and though he’s still looking slightly bug-eyed, his voice doesn’t sound so hollow anymore. “He didn’t tell me that he’d kept your brother’s fingers.”

“We don’t know that he did,” she says, trying to sound comforting. “But if he has, I’ve gotta know, because something has to be done about it, and I sorted things out with Roose but it won’t be worth nothing if he can still use that will and get both my woods and that new forest I got him.”

“Wait. I need this to be clear. You want us to go back. You want us to go back and check.”

“I...” She bites her lip. The shredded tissue has fallen off her lap and she only has her own hands to wring. “I can’t ask Jon. Last time... Some kid from the mill followed us. I can’t ask Jon because if the kid follows us again, maybe he’ll find where we put the body, and we can’t risk that. So it has to be us.”

She holds Theon’s gaze, mouth trembling and with her palms upturned on her knees in an offering of trust. _This is it. I’ve done my part. Please do yours._

Slowly, dark head leaning forwards an inch at a time like he’s almost fighting it, Theon nods.

“That’s a clever trick.”

Asha’s loud voice has the both of them jump. Leaning against the table, she looks at Sansa with a disdainful stare. Theon shoots her an uncomprehending look.

“Oh, I’ll do it,” she says. “But don’t think I won't remember this little act, wolf girl.”

“You don’t have to.”

Theon tries to touch her shoulder but she shakes him off.

“Of course I fucking have to. Don’t you get it, you idiot? That’s why she waited for me to get here before she asked you. She knows I won’t let you go back there. And pull him out of the water by yourself? You tell me, little brother. How many times have you held those hands. You ready to see them rotten? And he had a good smile, that Stark boy, didn’t he? I’ll fucking go. I’ll count his teeth for you.”

She walks the few steps to Sansa’s chair and looks down at her with a withering sneer.

“One day I’ll ask you to dig a body for me,” she says. “And you try to say no. See how it goes down with your guilt. The right honorable Starks, my fucking eye.”

 

 

 

 

When she walks away from the Greyjoys’ house, Theon’s hug is already a distant memory, all but obliterated by what came after. His calm resignation, Asha’s venomous jibes. Sansa staggers towards the car and barely manages to get in before she’s crying again, hunched over the wheel, her hands scrabbling at her knees.

And in spite of the painful scene, she can’t see what else she could have done. To send Jon was to risk Olly knowing even more than he already does - and too many people already know where they left the body, Theon and Asha and Jon and her and maybe Olly, that’s already a crowd. She couldn’t have let anyone else in on the secret.

Getting Asha to do it must have been the best possible outcome, shielding the rest of them from another encounter with Robb’s rotting corpse, relying upon the woman’s nerves of steel. And if there’s a price to pay, whatever Asha wants, Sansa will pay it. In due time. If she survives the rest - Petyr and the Boltons and any other threat that might have slipped her mind.

She wipes her eyes on her sleeve, rubs her nose. Before she starts the car, she remembers to check her phone.

The messages have piled up in her absence, missed calls from Petyr, mostly, and three texts from Margaery, demanding to know where she’s gone to, and if she ever returned from the Reeds’.

Two missed calls and a voicemail from an unknown number.

_“Sansa, it’s Jon. Where are you?”_

Eyes going round, she fidgets with the phone, plays the message again. There’s nothing more, just her name in a tone that she’s starting to recognize, of fond exasperation, and then the question, betraying an undercurrent of worry.

Throwing the phone on the passenger seat, she cranks down the window and takes in a quick gulp of cold air.

“Home,” she says, resolutely.

 

 

 

 

She sees Mel first, watching from her porch with a mug in her hands, although it’s getting way too cold to be doing one’s spying outdoors rather than from the warmth of one’s living room. Then she catches sight of Jon’s plaid jacket - Jon’s dark hair - his booted feet, planted firmly on the frost-covered ground. He’s sitting in front of the Stark house. The look he gives her as she swerves off the road and into the front yard makes her duck her head. Cold and hollow, his face a mask, like he’s been sitting here so long he no longer remembers what brought him here in the first place.

She slams the car door and hastens to cover the few feet that keep them apart.

“I’m sorry, I was...”

Jon snatches her by the collar of her jacket, lifting her up a good inch off the ground. She’s still trying to regain her balance when he kisses her. Standing on tiptoe, her hands tugging at his sleeves. Quickly however, the initial roughness subsides into something softer - less of a demand and more of a worried question. Jon gives her a nuzzle and brushes his lips against hers. Then he waits, suspended, for an answer. Sansa makes a tiny sound of agreement and rushes to meet him. She nips at his lips, peppers kisses along his jaw, licking her lips to soothe the chaffing of his beard.

“Inside,” Jon mutters, and before she can do much more than screech in surprise, he’s wrapped an arm around the back of her knees and thrown her over his shoulder.

As he stalks back inside, she glimpses Mel watching them, with that secretive smile upon her face. She’s still holding her mug and there’s another sitting on the banister before her. Sansa wonders for a second if she tried to offer it to Jon. If he declined. If he accepted and then changed his mind.

He was waiting for her when she got here. It’s all that matters.

Jon takes a sharp turn into her parents’ bedroom that has her booted feet knocking against the doorframe. He drops her onto the bed and sets to shrugging off his jacket and unbuckling his belt. Sansa has barely managed to tug down the zipper of her jacket that he’s settling against her again, worrying her neck with teeth and tongue until she pushes him back, smaller fists tapping against his chest.

“Jeans,” she mumbles.

Jon obeys, dragging down the fly and shoving them down her legs, and suddenly she’s the hasty one, as if his feverish state had caught on. She reaches into her panties with slick fingers to prepare herself, stealing a quick glance at his face - anguish, always anguish, and his affection for her like a blatant weakness - and then she pulls her knees up to her chest and snatches the front of his shirt.

Then there’s only relief, her body going limp against the mattress, the heat washing over her like the gust of warmth from an open door after a walk in the cold. Jon holds himself still, elbows braced against the mattress, dark curls falling into his eyes. If she turns her head a little she can see the angry slant of his mouth, the tense set of his jaw.

“If I don’t move,” he mutters. “If I don’t move, will that keep you from getting yourself killed?”

Sansa brushes back his hair, uncovers his eyes.

“There’s a version of this where we both live.” She tilts her chin up, accepts a drawn-out kiss.

“Had to hear about you going to the Boltons’...”

“I sorted things. You could say thanks...”

“You went to your uncle.”

“I’ll sort that out, too. Right now maybe you could just...” Wrinkling her nose, she gives him an amused grimace. “Move?”

She cants her hips upwards, watches the way it makes the scowl slide right off his face, replaced with pleasure, a spark of mirth.

“This ain’t over,” he warns.

She nods.

It doesn’t matter. She knows that she’s won - the tension remains but his anger is gone, and the pace he sets is so torturously slow that she can tell that he’s willing to pretend, if only for a moment, that they have all the time in the world.

The conversation has mostly slipped her mind when his mouth ghosts over her ear and he whispers, his voice warm,

“Thank you.”


	20. Debts

Sansa snatches the phone a split second after it begins to ring. Jon shifts behind her but doesn’t wake, and for a second she hesitates.

It would be so easy to move back against Jon, to tug the blanket closer and go back to sleep.

As always, her practical side wins out.

“Stark?”

Asha’s voice cuts through the warmth, chasing away the lingering remnants of sleep.

“Can we talk?”

“Yes,” Sansa says.

“Great. It’s done.”

Jon inhales sharply and Sansa looks down in surprise at where her nails have cut into his wrist. She quickly withdraws her hand.

“Was there...”

“No,” Asha says. “Ramsay was fucking with you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Unless you want details, I’ll go take a shower. Go back to bed. Say hi to the other Stark.”

She hangs up.

Sansa puts the phone back down, wondering why she’s not overcome with relief.

After a second, she understands that she’s too taken aback to feel much of anything.

Ramsay’s morbid taunting had become such a permanent fixture in her mind over the past few days that she’d forgotten, somehow, that it might all be a lie.

Jon mumbles something that sounds like a question.

“Asha,” she answers. “I had her check that... that the Boltons hadn’t taken anything. From Robb’s body. To prove that he was dead.”

Jon turns over and reaches for the bedside lamp. Sansa shuts her eyes against the glare, and maybe against Jon’s incredulous stare.

“What the hell, Sansa?”

“It had to be done.” She doesn’t open her eyes. “If there was even a chance that...”

“Look at me.”

He’s closer than she would have thought, so close that she can see the faint line between his brows from where he frowns so much. The tender skin around his stitches is slightly reddened and she wonders if it hurts him still, like her bruises keep hurting, a forlorn ache that she fears she’ll never be able to shake.

“You gotta quit doing things behind my back,” he says.

“You’re one to...”

Jon kisses her, hard enough that she gets a feel of the mattress springs beneath her back. He uses his hand to keep her in place, his thumb digging into her jaw.

“You’re gonna swear it to me.”

“I don’t...”

“I’m not going through this again. It’d kill me, alright? It’d kill me.”

Sansa stares at him. This time it’s not the onset of age that she sees, but the struggling youth beneath. Bright silver eyes, lips moist from kissing her.

It’s been on her mind for days, but it’s only now that she lets herself ask him, in a cautious whisper, “What happened to Ygritte?”

“She got shot,” Jon says, voice rough.

Sansa raises her head, brushing her lips against his.

“I’m gonna try not to die. But only if you do the same. You’ve gotta talk to me, too.”

“Hmm. Now’s not the right time.”

“See!” She rises onto her elbow and gives him her angriest glare, made less imposing maybe by her nakedness, though Jon’s making a valiant effort to keep his eyes on her face. “It’s a two-way street! You can’t ask me to be open and then...”

Jon smiles his weary smile.

“Did you try calling that number I gave you?”

“Yeah. Nobody answered. Who...”

“Arya.”

Sansa stares at him.

“What?”

Jon sighs. “That’s about all I got. She called after she left, around the time she called you. Gave me that number, in case there was an emergency. I’ve been leaving her messages. She doesn’t answer, but she called a few times. When I’m at work, always. To say she’s alright.”

At first Sansa can’t even speak, paralyzed between shock and outrage. Jon sits up, having apparently realized that this isn’t a conversation that will down go smoothly.

Sansa rises as well, eyes blazing.

“She never called me.”

“She said she had.”

“We don’t even have a phone.”

“I assumed it was before that. When I left her messages... Back in the fall... I kept telling her to come back. Now I don’t. I figured you two’d make up when things blew over...”

“And you say I hide things from you.”

When she turns her back on him, ready to spring off the bed, Jon grabs her around the waist and pulls her against him.

“She made me swear not to tell you. You can be so damn stubborn, the two of you...”

Jon and Arya have always been so close. The kind of relationship where, if you were in a room with them, you ended up being the odd one out. And so much of Sansa’s relationship with her sister is based on sibling rivalry that deep down, she understands why Jon didn’t bring it up.

She understands why she didn’t ask.

It’s a fact that if Arya hadn’t run away, she’d have remained Jon’s favorite. Sansa would have steered clear of Jon because Arya and her didn’t share. Not toys and not friends and certainly not Arya’s “favorite brother”.

It's a memory that makes Sansa cringe in retrospect, that time when Arya had tried to comfort Jon after another cutting remark from their mother, and how Sansa had run to Robb, eager to report this betrayal. _“Arya likes Jon better than you! She said he was her favorite brother!”_

Arya must have caused her offense somehow. Thrown her doll in the mud or something. They’d all been so young.

Is this how Arya will see it, she wonders? Like Sansa’s getting back at her, stealing Jon in retaliation for Arya’s abrupt departure?

Jon leans his forehead against her shoulder; murmurs, “What are you thinking?”

“Arya won’t like this.”

His sigh makes her shiver and he pulls her closer still, her back resting against his chest and with his legs on either side of her.

“She’ll come round. No need to worry about it now. It’s your uncle we need to talk about.”

“I’ll deal with him.”

“Sansa.”

“I’m being open!” she protests, twisting around in his arms so he’ll get a glimpse of her indignant face. “I’m telling you. I’ll deal with him. I’ll do it tomorrow if I can. You’ll just have to trust me, because if it’s me he’ll come along. He’ll listen. I’m not letting you take charge because then you’ll shoot him and it’ll be another body to get rid of and I’ll be trying to save you again. And I’m not sure I can because my aunt hates me and if we kill Petyr, she’ll have the money to prove we did. So you’ll have to trust me when I say that I can get him off our backs. Do you?”

Throughout this tirade Jon has barely moved. He goes on looking at her for a good long while before he takes a deep breath and says, halfway through a worried exhale, “Yeah.”

Sansa has grown so accustomed to their respective pig-headedness that at first, she doesn’t know how to react.

“... Yeah?”  
  
Jon shrugs. “Yeah, I trust you.”

Her shoulders fold in relief.

Oh, of course they’ve got a long way to go. The air is still heavy with the things they didn’t say - the things, maybe, that they were too afraid to ask. _Who shot Ygritte and why? What is Arya up to?_

__

__

_How the hell does one get rid of a man like Petyr Baelish?_

For the time being, however, these half confessions will do just fine.

 

 

 

 

Sansa asks Petyr to park his car outside _Mountain Lion._ He meets her where she asked, a little further up the road. She watches his slim silhouette draw near, as he picks his way over muddy puddles and sheets of foggy black ice.

“Why here?” he asks, once they're seated together in the car, Petyr with his hands flat against his pressed trousers, Sansa's back straight against the seat.

“I want to show you something. I figured you wouldn’t want to run into Jon, so this was easier than the house. But I didn’t want Cersei to see me.”

“What a well-rehearsed little speech. What’s the next item on your list? The reason behind this meeting? What is it that you have to ‘show me’?”

“I haven’t been to see her yet, with all that’s happened. I figured you’d want to come with me, maybe.”

“See who?” Petyr says, his face a picture of polite confusion.

Sansa holds his pale blue gaze.

“Mom,” she says.

 

 

 

 

Dark blue clouds and endless forests of pines; the sky above the car is streaked with orange and pink. Ahead of them, the road is also dark and blue, and if this had been any other day Sansa would have been at peace. She’d missed being able to drive her own car; there’s a heady power to being free of one’s movements.

Instead, she has to contend with Petyr’s silent, calculating presence, and it’s enough to make her nervous, resolute as she may be.

After a while she tries to hum, if only to dissuade him from speaking. He’s already given it a try, with a remark about the sorry state of country roads that she pretended not to hear.

_“I’m going where the cold wind blows... In the pines, in the pines...”_

Her voice croaks and she gives up, returning her full attention to the road ahead.

She’d asked Jon if he knew where the Freys and Boltons might have left her mother’s body. There’s many an abandoned mine shaft hereabouts, including the one where Jon and Theon used to work.

(Not Robb. He’d tried to get a job there too, but he’d come up against an unexpected wall. Their parents rarely ever refused him anything, but this they wouldn’t allow. The Starks hadn’t bled themselves dry to secure the forest three generations ago for a great-grandson to go back down the pit. Robb had tried to go anyways, but the foreman called Ned the moment Robb showed up, and her brother had to endure the humiliation of being picked up and driven home from the mine by his father.)

_“Could be the one after the gas station, down the road near Bear Gully? That’s where I’d have gone to get rid of a body. ... That’s not what I... I’m sorry. I shouldn’t... I didn’t mean to put it like that.”_

Jon had kept apologizing about his poor phrasing and she’d kept crying, because now that the image had taken shape in her head she couldn’t dislodge it. Her mother, broken at the bottom of a mineshaft, tossed down there with the body of the man she’d killed. Laying beneath it, maybe. Some ugly Frey, as stupid-looking and repulsive as the rest of his accursed kind.

She spent a long time crying this morning, curled up on the bed with her head in Jon’s lap like she’s seen the dogs do sometimes.

But she won’t cry now. So she turns right after the gas station, and soon she’s swerving onto the uneven road leading to Bear Gully.

 

 

 

 

“If you’re driving me to some isolated spot to have me killed, I’d rather know in advance,” Petyr says mildly. “So I can prepare myself.”

“I’m not having you killed,” Sansa replies, in a similar, dispassionate tone. “I know I have a debt towards you, and anyways, if I needed you to die, I’d do it myself.”

“I appreciate it.”  
  
The atmosphere is fairly tense in the car after that. Sansa can endure it. They’re getting close, besides.

 

 

 

 

It takes some convincing for him to follow her into the mine.

“We’re not going far,” she insists. “Here, you can have a headlamp.”

Petyr accepts the torch but remains where he is. In his expensive coat, he looks hopelessly out of place.

It’d be the same if the positions were reversed, she thinks charitably. She would be as out of place in Petyr’s land of mirrors as Petyr is in here, with his feet half-buried in coal dust, almost engulfed by the tall shadow of the Jon-like pines.

“Is Cat really in here?” he asks.

For a second, in the narrow beam of her headlamp which leaves part of his face in shadow, she sees something of the awkward teenager he must have been, the one about whom her mother once said, _Oh, he was a nice boy._

Like it was an insult.

And whether or not it was true back then, it didn’t remain so, because the Petyr who now stands before her is hardly the kind of person who'd fit that description. He's clever and manipulative, for sure, and at times he can be charming. But he's certainly not _nice_.

Her mother didn’t always know best.  
  
“Come on.”  
  
When she ducks into the tunnel, Petyr follows.

 

 

 

 

“There could be a lot of bodies down here. Or whatever’s left of them, they might have doused them in acid or whatever...”

Thankfully, the headlamps don’t reach so far down.

“Sansa...”

“I just wanted to make sure you understood,” she says.

“Well, I did think that something horrible must have happened.” His light vacillates and he slaps the side of the lamp, far too hard, temporarily forcing the beam back into focus. “Of course I...”

“I’m not your pet project,” she interrupts him, straining to keep her voice calm. “I’m not some ignorant country girl that you can educate in exchange for sex.”

“Sansa. I never thought...”

His gaze falls upon the gun in her hand, and he stops talking.

“You did teach me to lie,” she says. “I think I’m good at it now.”

“Sansa, it doesn’t have to be like this. Why don’t we... Why don’t we talk about it?”

In the narrow tunnel, with their heads scraping the roof, she can almost smell the fear on him. A faint scent of sweat beneath the earthy smell of the tunnel.

“We are talking. And you’re right. It doesn’t have to be like this. You’re still family. It ain’t right to hurt your own kin.”

She waits for the relief to wash over him, for his shoulders to slacken and his mouth to twist into a painful parody of a smile.

Then she raises the gun, holding it with steady hands.  
  
“Sansa!” Petyr cries out.  
  
“Do you know why they killed her?”  
  
She’s had time to think about this, time and again whenever the nightmares jolt her awake.

“Not to torture Robb or pressure him into signing that damn will... They killed her because she killed one of them. You think you knew her, but you didn’t. And you don’t know me either if you think I won’t shoot.”

“Please. I loved her and my feelings for you...”

“Your feelings? Oh, I know this has all been very amusing to you. Including all of this...” She jerks her head towards the damp surroundings, scattering the beam of her headlamp over the walls. “Some backcountry fun. Drugs and murders and your pretty niece in the middle of it, begging for your help.”

“Of course I didn’t think it was _fun_ ,” Petyr says, voice softening in what is clearly a change of tactics.

“You did,” Sansa frowns. “It’s strangely stupid of you. Your life must really be frustrating that you’d think that. But if it means that you’ll help, and that you want to be a part of this family...”

“Yes,” Petyr hurries to say. “Yes.”

“A regular family. Lysa can invite us over for lunch, once a year maybe. If Bran wants to go to college...”

Petyr snorts - not very loud, and it sounds more hysterical than mocking, but he recovers quickly, and strokes the hair on either side of his face, beneath the frayed orange band of the headlamp.

“I’ll pay your brother’s tuition fees. Can we go back outside?”

 

 

 

 

He’s shaking. Walking behind him she’s got a good view of his jittering shoulders, though he’s trying to hide it, walking at a sedate pace with his hands deep inside his pockets.

_Good._

It was always going to be a gamble. To scare him without scaring him off, using both his fascination and his revulsion to bind him to her - and until he decides to cut all ties with Lysa and leave his miserable family life, she’s confident that it will work.

In the car, he doesn’t speak. He just keeps staring straight ahead as she veers onto the dirt path and brings them back onto the main road.

The silent is such that she considers changing her mind, killing him and to hell with it, she’ll find a way to sort things out. Her plan can only work if he gets past his humiliation, if he gives her some definite sign that he values his life more than his pride.

It lasts until they’re back on the road, with the lights of the station dimming behind them and the mountains gone black under the grey blue sky.

Petyr turns towards her and says, with a tinge of uneasiness, “It’s a beautiful night. Makes you value the sky.”

If Sansa could, she’d scream and point at Petyr and take Jon by the arm and shake him.

_See? See? I was right._

It doesn’t always have to end in blood, and sometimes the ways of the valley are best used with caution, a pinch rather than a spoonful.

“It’s always better,” she says, “to value what you have, rather than keep wanting stuff you can’t get.”

_And if you forget again, I’ll find a way to make you remember._

 

 

 

 

Sansa doesn’t have much experience when it comes to job interviews. For the job at the _Mountain Lion_ , she’d followed Margaery’s advice. _Wear a skirt, remember to respect yourself but also, put on a lot of make-up and don’t be afraid to sound stupid._ Before that, there’d only been the summer when she'd sold tickets and swept popcorn off the floors of the decrepit cinema in town. She hadn’t been interviewed for that job. Robb had worked there for five years and the owner was a friend of her mum’s.

When she asks Jon how she’s supposed to dress he just laughs, laughs and kisses the side of her head and tells her in a warm whisper, “Darling, you’ll do just fine.”

That rumbling laugh is enough to drive the question away from her mind for a while, but it comes back to her later on, once they’re in the truck on their way to the mill. Then she realizes that she might have put on a jacket that didn’t make her look small, and that she might have wanted to braid her hair in a crown, so that she could hide it under her knit cap and look less like a girl.

Despite a nervous flurry of anticipation, that first day she walks around the mill like one might go about a new dwelling, mapping it out, already trying to make it into a home. And there’s parts of it that are familiar already. The building where Jon took her to dance, now a break room and a mess hall. The line of trees where she'd talked with Olly, now recognizable as the eastern border of Jon’s woods. As they walk past the towering log stacks on their way to Jeor Mormont’s office, skinny Pyp waves at her from a forklift.

Jon was right and it isn’t so much a job interview as a sort of preliminary introduction. The Old Bear gives her a long look before he turns around and leads her into a small room behind his office.

“That’s the room for record-keeping,” he says. “I can get someone to clean the window for you, but with all the sawdust and snow flying around, it won’t do much.”

“It’ll be fine,” Sansa assures him, mostly because the dirty window is the least of the room’s problems. It looks as if the workers and Mormont himself have been throwing every unwanted object in here since the mill was built, an impressive feat considering that the room is twelve feet long and six across.

Mormont remains on the threshold - there isn't enough space for him to move around. He’s a big and sturdy man, old as he may be.

“I’ll get the kid to come in with a broomstick, when you’ve got a better idea of what papers need keeping. When we opened the mill, Snow’s great-uncle was in charge of the books. Aemon. Before he became blind as a bat. In the last year, Snow’s been the only one in here.”

“I can see that,” Sansa says, picking up a full ashtray from atop an open binder. The writing on the open page is unusually large, in a slanted, looping script. Aemon Targaryen’s work, no doubt. She’d forgotten that Jon had another living relative aside from Dany.

In fact, she’s not sure whether Aemon Targaryen is alive or dead. He already seemed to be a hundred years old when she was six or seven. Parents would ask him to keep an eye on their kids during the big valley gatherings, while they had a drink or took a spin on the creaky floorboards of the town hall.

“Does this work?” she asks, pointing at what seems to be a computer screen, though the big plastic keyboard is buried under pages of tax returns and unopened mail, and there’s a four-year-old calendar taped to the screen.

It takes Jon and Mormont a second to figure out what she’s talking about.

“I don’t know,” Jon says. “Aemon never used it. Seemed easier to work off what he’d done.”

“But you do know how to use a computer,” Sansa says. “The one that tells you where to make the cuts in the logs? It must be more complicated than this one. And you do the record keeping by hand?”

She crouches under the desk and pulls at whatever cables she can reach, making sure the mainframe is plugged in. Then it’s only a matter of pushing a button for the computer to start whirring, the screen lighting the calendar a pale blue.

“See,” Jon tells Mormont, as if she’d just achieved something worthy of praise.

Sansa straightens up and dusts her knees, ducking her head so they won’t see her blushing. At best, she’ll be able to put to use the compulsory computer classes that she had to take in high school, most of which she’d spent doodling in her notebooks. But it’s still Jon thinking she’s worth something, and if that’s how happy he is when she turns on a computer, she can’t begin to imagine the face he’ll make when she starts handing him spreadsheets that look like actual rows of numbers, and not Aemon’s medieval calligraphy. She spares the records another glance, wrinkling her nose at the assortment of ink, cigarette burns and grease stains.

“You’re hired,” Mormont tells her. “Snow, make sure she’s got a chair to sit in. This one hasn’t got a seat.”

 

 

 

 

Sansa knows better than to assume that their troubles are over. Ramsay might be dead and Petyr might have left, but she doesn’t immediately bring the boys back.

She calls them, twice a day at least. She talks to Bran and she can hear Rickon running around in the background. _A few more days,_ ; she tells Meera.

Meera says not to worry, that the boys aren’t being any trouble, although Sansa hears something shatter right as she says it, as if Rickon had been waiting for his cue.

She thanks Meera and she wonders what it is that she’s waiting for. It’s not like she’ll ever get any definite proof that things are fine. There’ll always be Freys and Boltons in the valley, she can hardly kill them all, and wherever she goes, it’s likely that there’ll be a body underfoot - swaying under still waters, or turning to dust at the bottom of a mine shaft.

She learns to find her way around the mill and its workers. There’s only one other woman, tall Val with the warm, wheat-colored hair. She’s part of the team of loggers, along with Tormund and Grenn and three or four other bearded men whom Sansa can’t tell apart just yet.

At lunchtime Jon comes to fetch her, or Pyp does, or Edd, and she eats with them in the break room.

On her second day on the job, Melisandre comes by in the morning with an offer of pie.

Sansa accepts it, but that night she drags Jon back to his house rather than hers, lets him take her with her elbows braced against the kitchen counter, face tilted towards his hoarse-voiced promises that there’s no one else, that she’s a foolish girl if she thinks any different, that it’s no use behaving like such a wild cat.

She smiles and grasps the hand at her throat and when he lets her raise it to her lips for a kiss, she gives him a bite.

The next pie they eat, he’s baked himself, and he presents it to her with a sheepish smile that soon has her on her tiptoes, trying to steal the breath from his mouth.

 

 

 

 

It takes her a few days to get the hang of the accounts at the mill. Jon’s done a good enough job of keeping track of things over the past year, but it still feels like she has to learn a whole new language, and learn it fast. She does her best, and as it turns out, she’s more than up to the task. At first Jon goes over the books with her in the evenings, shedding light on the cramped notes that she can’t make out on her own, the names of the companies they sell the timber to, the names of the seasonal loggers who get paid at specific times in the year. Sansa balances the notebook on his knee with a blank sheet against the open page and makes notes of her own. Forest council quotas, the price of the yarder the mill had to buy a few months back. Her sums add up to the amount of money Mormont pays his workers, to the amount of money he paid the past year in taxes.

On the third night she falls asleep on Jon’s knee, face first on the notebook, and she wouldn’t ever have found out if he hadn’t made fun of her in the morning, of her soft snores and of the spot of drool she left in the middle of the page.

 

 

 

 

The following Monday, Stannis Baratheon comes to the mill.  
  
Sansa finds out when Olly rushes into her cluttered workspace, bracing himself against the doorjamb to catch his breath, face red from running.

“Sheriff’s here.”

Sansa freezes, her hands poised over the keyboard.

“What about?”

“I dunno,” Olly mumbles, with a shrug of his narrow shoulders, though he’s quick to add, “Do you?”

“No, Olly, I don’t,” Sansa says, with the patient tone that she’s been adopting with him of late. “I guess I’ll go back to work, if that’s alright? I’ve got a lot to do, and I’d like to take a lunch break at some point.”

After he’s left, however, she moves her hands to her knees where she can fist them over her jeans.

_It’s about Ramsay. It’s about Robb. He’s come to arrest Jon. He’s come to..._

“Ma’am,” Stannis says, with a tip of his hat. As if he’d finally learned some valley manners. Sansa only nods, as if she’d forgotten all of hers.

“A word, if you’ve got a minute,” he says, though he’s already moving away, eyes cutting to something else. The message is clear.

She might not have a minute, but he doesn’t give a damn about it.

Jon is waiting for them outside, having apparently been coerced into taking an anticipated break. Sansa refuses his offer of a cigarette, for fear that her trembling hands will betray her nerves.

“What’s this about?” Jon asks.

Stannis takes off his hat, gripping the crown tight in one hand as he inspects the top for some imaginary dust. He begins to run his hand around the brim; long, mechanical sweeps.

“Do you know a Myranda Bolton?” His gaze snaps back to Sansa’s face, as if he expects to find something there.

And under other circumstances, maybe he would have. The shuttered face of a mountain girl, at the very least, if not a suspicious flash of recognition.

As it is, Sansa’s features express nothing but shock.

She should have worried about Myranda - unpredictable Myranda, with her swinging crowbar and her devotion to Ramsay. But the truth is, she’s been so concerned with just about every other threat that she’d forgotten the girl’s very existence.

“Bolton’s not her real name,” Stannis says. “But it’s the one she used.”

“I don’t know her,” Jon says.

“Used?” Sansa ventures, in a strained whisper.

Jon casts a warning glance her way.

“So you do know her,” Stannis says, his hand going still upon the hat.

“I saw her once or twice. When I went to the Boltons’. Not recently.”

“When did you see her last?”

Sansa gives a reluctant shrug. Beside her, Jon has put out his cigarette and he’s standing with his hands in the pockets of his plaid jacket. It’s a relaxed posture, but she hasn’t missed how he’s stepped sideways with this last question, coming to stand between Stannis and her.

“Ten days ago, maybe?” she answers, after a time.

“What’s going on?” Jon asks.

“She was found dead in a water hole. In the woods next to the Bolton trailer park. She fell straight through the ice and it looks like she was bitten by a cottonmouth.”

“It must have been an unpleasant death,” Sansa says, mostly to put an end to what is fast becoming an unpleasant silence.

“You must think I’m stupid,” Stannis snaps. “We’re in the dead of winter, these snakes hibernate. I know this was a message.”

“You can see some in winter sometimes,” Sansa ventures, though she doubts that she sounds convincing. “It’s just really rare.”

She’s trying very hard not to look at Jon, although she wants little more than to turn around and ask him if he had anything to do with this.

Or rather, what he had to do with this, because there’s no way he wasn’t involved.

“Did the Boltons call you?” Jon asks. “Was it them said we were involved? Girl fell in a hole. It happens. Happens a lot in winter when there's holes under the ice.”

“Ain’t the hole I have an issue with,” Stannis says. “It’s the snake bite.”

 _Baratheons._ ; They keep moving away, but there’s a part of every Baratheon man that’s valley-made, the part that governs the guilty politeness, like they expect a kick in the rear from a long-dead Ma. And that insolent drawl, which must have been passed down along generations of foolish, fearless sons.

“Good luck catching that cottonmouth, then,” Jon says. “What’s the snake looking at? Ten years involuntary manslaughter?”

Stannis glares at him. It’s only slightly more intimidating than his usual expression of intense disapproval.

“She’s the one roughed you up, right?” he asks Sansa.

“I wouldn’t have killed her for it, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Sansa says.

Stannis huffs, or groans, it’s difficult to tell.

“This better be the last I hear of this whole rotten business. Or else I’ll be coming back, and I won’t pick sides. All of you'll be going down. Starks, Boltons, Targaryens.”

“Even the snakes,” Jon says.

Sansa could have punched him. But Stannis just huffs again, and this time it sounds rather like a close-lipped laugh.

“Especially the snakes,” he says.

 

 

 

 

“Was this you?” Sansa asks, as Stannis is walking away, shoving the hat back onto his head.

“Nope.”

She makes no effort to hide her disbelief.

“Nope?”

“Nope,” Jon repeats. “But I know who did.”

 

 

 

 

She lets him drive. Night has already fallen and she’s not sure she'd remember the way. She hasn't come here since the summer before high school started; there were parties on the lawn out back. She's never been inside the house.

When Jon said he’d go after work, she fully expected him to go alone. He must have expected it too, because that’s how he’d phrased it. _“I’ll go after work,"_ ; not _“we.”_ It ate at her all afternoon, as she pretended to work on her columns of numbers, the bluish tables dancing in front of her eyes.

And then he came in around the time they usually left, knocking on the door like he does every other day, even though it was open and she’d seen him come around the building, with that gait she knows so well, shoulders slightly thrown forwards, hands deep inside the pockets of his jacket.

“You wanna come with?”

Now she’s sitting in the car and she doesn’t know how to feel. It must have been eating at him, too, that he’d change his mind. It doesn’t mean the visit will be any less uncomfortable for her.

“I was thinking we could go get the boys next Sunday,” she ventures. “I should be able to square things with the school. Rickon’s teacher is an old classmate, and they all want to try and get Bran into that advanced program... Some of the boys in his class take days off to go fishing, I’ll say we were visiting relatives... What do you think?”

The silence stretches and stretches and after a while Sansa stops staring at Jon’s clenched jaw, choosing instead to rest her temple against the cold window.

When they get there the house is lit all over like a Christmas tree. It’s smaller than Sansa remembers, though still three times as big as her own house, and twice as high. When she used to come for parties, she thought it was the most beautiful house she’d ever seen, big and white with tall, fancy windows. Now she sees it for what it is - an anomaly. A pretty thing, perhaps, but sticking out like a sore thumb, a recent construct that tries to pass off as something older.

It’s too much, and not particularly elegant, and now that time has started to catch up with it, it’s aging in the way of shoddy constructions, with the paint peeling off to reveal the bricks and mortar, and mold and mushrooms colonizing the edges of the lower windows.

“We don’t have to stay long,” Jon tells her.

Sansa lags behind as he climbs the porch steps, just so that she can give Dany’s bumper a childish, mean-spirited kick.

Dany comes to open the door in an old rock band t-shirt and frayed shorts and a pair of bright red leg warmers. Her pale blonde hair is loose upon her shoulders and whatever she’s been doing, it’s given her a healthy glow.

“Ya’ll better come in.”

Jon holds out his hand without looking back and Sansa doesn’t think twice before seizing it. His grip is a little too tight.

“Beer? Wine? I’ve got decent wine, actually. More decent than the water. Jorah’s been buying this brand of mineral water and I don’t care that it’s supposed to be ‘from the mountains’, it tastes like a swamp.”

“Sheriff came to see us,” Jon says.

He steers Sansa into the kitchen, where Dany is rummaging in the fridge. On the inside, the house is just as much of a letdown. The rooms are wide and the ceilings are high, but all it means, it seems, is that the building isn’t heated properly.

Dany and Jon must share a number of traits, unless her husband is the one responsible for the surrounding mess, and for the dozens of cigarette butts planted in a seashell full of ashes.

“What crime was this about?” Dany asks as she straightens up, two beer bottles in hand. She hands one to Sansa and keeps the other for herself. “You know where the liquor cabinet is,” she tells Jon. Turning to Sansa, she explains, “He says I can’t pour whiskey.”

“You’re not supposed to pour a full glass,” Jon says, wearily. “I ain’t drinking anyways. Dany, you can’t...” He sighs, hands steepled over his nose. “You can’t just decide to sort my problems for me.”

“It ain’t like that.”  
  
“No?” He frowns. “You killing that girl, that ain't sorting out my problems?”

Sansa gives Dany a curious look. She’s such a small girl. Small and doll-like in some ways, with her lovely round cheeks and her big bright eyes. It’s hard to picture her shoving a girl into a frozen pond.

Then again it might not have taken that much strength, and Dany’s just the kind of person who could creep up on you by surprise, innocent and harmless until she’s at your back and you’re already falling forwards, headfirst towards the glittering ice.

“Jon, it ain’t like that,” Dany insists. “I owed you. You solved one of my problems, so I solved one of yours. It puts a clean end to things, doesn’t it?”

Her gaze drifts to the side, latches onto Sansa’s for a lasting second.

“You remember my brother Viserys?” Dany asks her. “He liked to... It doesn’t really matter. He was strange and he had a wild temper for such a bag of bones. I assume that’s why he brought you, so that you can hear that story... The story of how Jon killed my brother for me.”

Jon doesn’t reply, but he meets Sansa’s eye when she makes a sharp turn towards him. He looks sad. It makes her resent the both of them - Dany with her secrets, Jon and the hold he has on her, that even now, she wants to go over and rub the sadness off of him in one breath-catching embrace.

“He was always drunk. One night he decided we were immune to fire and he struck a match in the living room. Sometimes he said he’d sell me off and make a profit. Sometimes he said he’d marry me himself... Anyways. He did sell me off. To Drogo...”

“Rodeo guy with a big farm,” Jon says. He’s looking at his feet now.

“He’s dead,” Dany informs Sansa. “Drogo. He fell off a bull and broke his neck. I’d have been fine with him if he hadn’t died, I think. He loved me alright. But yeah. Viserys found out that Rhaegar’s money would no longer be ours when Jon turned eighteen. So he snapped. Took Jon for a drive. It didn’t end well for him.”

 _It ended at the bottom of a mineshaft._ Sansa knows this story, like everybody else. They’d found Viserys’s car a few days later, and then his body, still reeking of alcohol.

“Blood ties only mean so much,” Daenerys says. “You’ve gotta know when to cut loose. Well, Jon. I’m cutting you loose. And as far as I’m concerned, that girl was a crazy bitch.”

Sansa remembers Myranda well enough that she won’t contest the statement. It doesn’t mean that she’s grateful, or that Daenerys’s story didn’t make her skin crawl.

The aftermath of Viserys’s death is way too easy to picture - Jon and Dany drawing comfort from each other, stumbling into Dany’s bed, maybe.

“Thank you,” Jon says softly.

Moving forward, he lifts the beer from Dany’s unresisting hands and sets it on the table. Like he had on the evening they found her outside the house, waiting for him after the fight at the bar, he frames her face between his hands. He looks down at her and Dany cranes her neck to look up at him, her mouth set in a line.

“Look after yourself,” she says.

“Don’t step on that copperhead,” Jon answers, the lulling rhythm of his voice seeming to suggest that this is something he’s had occasion to say before.

“You know I won’t,” Dany says, pushing down his hands.

“Don’t let Jorah step on it, then. He’s a good man.”

“You keep out of trouble. I ain’t gonna help you again.” She gives his chest a slight shove. “Go, now.”

Jon walks backwards a few steps, and then he turns around and goes out the door. Behind his back, Dany rolls her eyes at Sansa.

 

 

 

 

They’re halfway down the corridor and Sansa’s looking for someplace to put down her beer, when Jon waves his hand at her, and then at a room on their right. When she makes to join him, he halts her with a hand against her chest.

“Don’t,” he whispers. “Look.”

Most of the room is plunged into darkness, save for the neon lights of two terrariums on either side. Sansa sees a glimpse of pale green in one, and in the other she can make out coil upon coil of pink scales, striped with red.

“That’s the copperhead,” Jon says, still in a murmur, with a nod at the red snake. “Other one’s an eyelash viper. The cottonmouth’s not in the house. There’s a pond out back. It should be sleeping this time of year. Big black thing, as long as you’re tall.”

They step back carefully and don’t exchange another word until they’re out of the house. Sansa welcomes the cold, for how it cools her head and allows her to jog to the car under pretense of getting warm.

“It’s Viserys who started with the snakes,” Jon says, as they drive away from the big house. “Couldn’t handle them, of course. It’s a damn miracle he didn’t get bit. Course he didn’t have a permit. They’ve taken just fine to Dany though, the two exotic ones. She’s never tried to trap the cottonmouth. I think it just likes her. Robb used to...”

Sansa waits for him to continue. In spite of her insecurities, there’s something appealing about this talkative version of Jon, and she doesn’t have the faintest clue what Robb might have to do with any of this talk of snakes and mad, fire-loving men.

Jon sneaks a glance at her and quickly returns his eyes to the road.

“He used to dare me to spend the night,” he says. “Because he knew I was afraid of them.”

“Did you?” Sansa asks, a little aggressively maybe.

Jon laughs.

“You know how it is when... Or maybe you don’t. When you’re young and stupid and someone goes and tells you they bet you can’t do something. I was gonna do it out of spite.”

They drive another few seconds in silence.

“Robb had second thoughts,” Jon says. “I hadn’t been there half an hour that he was dragging me out the front door.” He turns to look at her. “She’s right, you know. Blood only means so much. Robb was a brother to me, in all the ways that count.”

Sansa searches for something to say. Something that isn’t as heartfelt and pointless as, _“I wish I’d been there, when your uncle tried to kill you. I wish I’d been able to help.”_

“For what it’s worth, Dany didn’t get along with Ygritte, either,” Jon says, lips quirking. “But they made it work. She knew it was either Ygritte and me or nothing, and she knows it’s gonna be the same with you.”

“You and me, or nothing?” Sansa says, a tad hesitantly, acutely aware that she shouldn’t find comfort in the finality of it, not with Jon’s talk of how Ygritte’s death almost killed him, not with so many dead bodies involved.

“Yeah, well. You and me and Arya and the boys and the dogs, I guess.”

Sansa has a startled laugh. Keeping his left hand on the wheel, Jon offers her the other, palm up.

“That alright with you?”

She grips his hand tight.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s alright.”


	21. Buffalo Plaid

She’s about to knock on the door when she hears Bran’s voice on the other side. Leaning in, she presses her ear against the frame, much as her mother would have.

“... where we used to go when we were kids and I think you’d like it. It’s full of mayapples and they’re toxic but they look like all these little parasols. That’s where we found our dogs, someone had shot their mother. Robb said their father was a wolf but I don’t think that’s true. I really want you to meet Summer...”

Sansa checks the time and gives the door a knock. Bran shuffles around inside and whispers, “Wait a second.”

The door opens.

“Yeah?”

Bran looks up at her, holding the old cordless phone against his chest.

“I’ve gotta drive you guys to school,” Sansa reminds him. “Or I’ll be late for work.”

“Sure. I’ll be here in a minute.”

Sansa hesitates, eyes flicking towards the phone and back, but in the end she just gives him a slight smile.

“A minute,” she insists.  
  
“A minute,” Bran nods, ever serious. She wonders if he knows that he’s lying.

In the kitchen she gathers the boys’ lunches, calls out for Rickon through the window, and returns to kiss Jon’s temple, where he’s sitting at the table with his cooling coffee and his third or fourth cigarette.

“If I were you, I’d smoke less, save some money,” she tells him. “Because that’s gonna be a hell of a phone bill, if Bran keeps calling his girlfriend...”

“Girlfriend?” Jon repeats, eyebrows raised, lifting his eyes from one of her father’s magazines. There was a whole pile of them in the garage, hardware and carpentry issues, the pages thick and soft and wrinkled with age.

“Well, I don’t know,” Sansa admits, sitting herself cross legged in the chair next to his, because the subject definitely warrants a chat. She’d rather have it with Margaery, because Jon is unlikely to have the right reaction of boundless curiosity and light-hearted mockery. But there’ll be time for this tomorrow, when she meets with Marg after work for a drink at Benjy’s. “It’s hard to tell, with Bran. It could take him ten years but he could also have proposed already.”

“Proposed,” Jon parrots again, and bless him, he looks a little frightened. “Aren’t they a little young...”

“I’m joking, you idiot!” Sansa swats his arm. “Of course they’re not getting married. He’s gonna live here with me until he’s eighteen and then, if he’s still head over heels... And even then...” She searches for words. “They wouldn’t have to... In this day and age, and all. Maybe they won’t want to get married. Maybe they can just settle together and be happy.”

There's something else in Jon's eyes now, something like understanding. He closes the magazine and puts out his cigarette.

“We still talking about Bran and Meera Reed?”

“I... Yeah. Yeah of course we...”

She looks down in surprise at his hand on hers. Raising her head again, she finds herself pinned in place by his grey eyes. He gives her fingers a light squeeze.

“Sansa. Do you...”

“I’m ready,” Bran proclaims loudly.

Sansa jumps, frantically pulling away despite Jon’s attempt at holding onto her hand.

“Great. We’re going. I’ll see you later,” she adds, leaning down with the intention of kissing his cheek.

He catches her around the waist, fisting a hand in the back of her shirt.

“Does it scare you?” he whispers, breath warm against her ear.

“What?” she asks, recklessly, bolting under his hands like a frightened colt.  
  
“Marrying me.”

“Let’s talk about this later,” she pleads.

This time he doesn’t try to stop her and she quickly goes around the table, picking up the boys’ lunch bags and preceding Bran through the door. But she can feel Jon’s eyes on her all the way to the car, and she has to resist reaching up to feel the heat of her burning cheeks.

 

 

 

 

_Don’t speak, please don’t speak,_ she begs Bran, as she navigates the salt-covered roads on their way to the boys’ school.

Although she doesn’t say it out loud, she can tell - from his small sideways glances and the awkward pat that he eventually gives her, his hand lingering on her shoulder - that he understands. It’s only when he’s ready to leave, sitting in his chair outside the car and with Rickon already halfway across the playground, that he brings the chair forward, putting his hand on her rolled down window.

_He’s got much bigger hands than I remembered. When did he get so big?_

“You’ve got a right to be happy, same as everybody else,” he says.

Sansa takes a deep breath before she answers.

“I don’t want to burn the candle at both ends. He’s only asking because... Because he’ll never feel safe. Because he thinks we’re gonna die young. That’s not something you build a life on.”

“It’s not _only_ that,” Bran says. “But he’s gonna stay whatever you choose, so, you should just give him a straight answer.”

 

 

 

 

It’s a fairly calm day at work, one of those days when the loggers don’t come in from the forest and the mill seems as frozen as the surrounding pines. Mid-morning, Sansa meets Jon and Edd for a cigarette break and is surprised when Myrcella joins them, looking like a miniature sunset with her pink parka and her blonde hair and her rosy cheeks.

“I brought coffee,” she smiles, holding up her coffee holder.

Edd attempts a clumsy smile of his own, pushing up his khaki cap to uncover a pair of brown eyes.

“You didn’t have to, we could have got you some.”

“Mill coffee’s disgusting,” Jon says, as he accepts one of the cardboard cups.

He’s not smiling but Sansa can tell that he wants to.

“That’s what happens when you try to heat soup in a coffee pot,” she says. “You'll explain that to Tormund before I go buy a new one.”

Edd takes a sip of his coffee, burns himself, sputters and promptly starts smiling again to try and hide his grimace of pain.

“It’s delicious,” he rasps.

Myrcella’s smile is way too clever for Sansa’s liking, but the girl wouldn’t have much to gain from playing with Edd’s feelings, aside from pissing off her mother, maybe.

A dirt-poor mill worker who barely speaks, even when he’s being talked to, and who has an unfortunate habit to communicate by way of sarcastic comebacks.

Cersei would have a fit.  
  
“Okay, where’s that thing you wanted to show me?” Jon asks. Sansa makes a vague gesture in the direction of her small office and Jon nods. “Let’s go.”

His hand brushes against her back as he follows her inside the mill owner’s empty office, and then inside her own. It doesn’t look half as disorderly as it used to. There’s even two chairs with the seats still attached, should they wish to sit down.

“They’ll have to figure that out, at some point,” Jon says. “It won’t be me helping them.”

“Are you sure...”

“Yeah, it’s a terrible idea. Edd will realize it soon enough. I did warn him. If he ain’t gonna listen... Well he better make the most of it.” He snorts. “To see them all pairing up like this, you’d start to think that winter’s over. Isn’t coupling supposed to wait until spring?”

Sansa raises her eyebrows at him.

“Not here," Jon says, shaking his head. "God knows I want to.”

“You want to... What?” Sansa asks, taking a step back towards the desk as she reaches for his shirt, pulling him against her front. Legs open wide, chin lifted. Wondering if it will always be like this; with this need like a vital imperative, something that it’s no use fighting.

“Alright then,” Jon says, in a rough murmur. Hand pushing down between their bodies, his knuckles rubbing insistently at the seam of her jeans. The burn makes her whimper and strain against him, but he pushes back - braces himself against the desk, and strokes her harder. It takes a few incoherent pleas on her part before his hand slides inside her jeans, dry, callous fingers finding her wet and already quivering, and she holds on tight to his neck as she comes, slightly pushing off the table so his fingers will be fully buried inside her.

Jon has shut his eyes and is holding her collar in a white-knuckled grip. Slowly, he withdraws his hand. When Sansa snatches his wrist his eyes flash open, and he holds his breath as she touches his fingers to her lips, licks them clean. Though Jon is leaning towards her, he doesn’t seem to be aware of it. It's a gradual gesture, irresistible perhaps. Like the strongest tree must eventually give in to the push and pull of the wind.

“I’ve got something to ask,” she whispers.

Jon’s thumb strokes her mouth, wiping it clean.

“Picked your time, didn’t you?”

Sansa's eyes sparkle with mirth.

“Maybe?”

“What... do you... want,” he asks, punctuating it with kisses, the last one harsher than the rest, his teeth pulling on her bottom lip.

“Could you... take the boys somewhere after school?”

“Somewhere,” Jon repeats. “Benjy’s? A movie?”

“Anything you like. I just need a few hours.”  
  
He tilts up her chin, gives her a long look.  
  
“Hmm. Sure.”

Sansa raises her eyebrows.

“Thanks. Aren’t you... don’t you wanna know why?”

Jon shrugs.

“If you want to tell me. We’re already living in each other’s pockets, aren’t we? You don’t have to tell me everything you do. And I think you deserve some time off from the lot of us.”

“I don’t want time off from you,” she says, and finds that she means it.

They do argue sometimes. Over the price of gas, or Rickon’s refusal to obey any kind of curfew, or Mel’s offers of nightcaps or Arya’s continued absence. And in such moments, Jon rolls his eyes and stuffs his hands in his pockets and stalks off, or she’ll start some biting tirade and proclaim that he’s infuriating and he’ll shout back that she’s a prideful stubborn _child_ and she’ll be the one leaving with a sharp, angry hiss.

And whether it’s him or her, they won’t have covered ten feet that the other will be running to bridge the gap. Her arms around Jon’s middle, burning face pressed against red and black wool - Jon’s arms sweeping her up, cold nose rubbing against her neck. A whispered apology and a quick possessive bite as she shudders in pleasure or relief or both.

They do argue and it feels good and it makes the sex that much wilder. Maybe she was indeed an animal in some other life. Sometimes when she’s with Jon every other concern disappears and it’s just an instinctive search for warmth, curling up on the bed and pulling his arm around her, or letting him drape himself over her legs because that seems to be his favorite sleeping position.

_Wolf boy._

After their arguments he clings harder. She can tell the precise moment when he falls asleep, because his hold on her loosens, going from achingly tight to merely firm. In his half-sleep he’s often drowsily affectionate, lightly scratching her back or depositing warm kisses above her hipbone.

“Don’t come back too late,” she tells him. “I sleep better when you’re here.”

It’s an understatement, though he might not know it. When she wakes up from a bad dream she likes to find him there, so that she can drift off again with her hands wound tightly in his hair, or she’ll slide lower in the bed and stroke him until he wakes up, enough to guide her onto her stomach with a steady hand.

“I’ll take them to see a movie,” Jon says. “We’ll be back around 8 or 9.”

He gives her one of those smiles, a passing twitch of the lips before the usual sadness returns.

It’s a good start, she decides. If she can make him happy for a few seconds at a time... She’ll start there, and keep trying.

“Go back to work,” she orders.  
  
Jon kisses her, or she kisses him.  
  
“Open a window,” he says, before letting her go. “Smells like sex in here.”

Once he’s gone she follows his advice, if only to cool her heated face. The window behind the desk is already open a crack - she tends to leave it so despite the cold, because the stove can turn the room into a furnace.

She leans out to take a breath of cold air.

Her gaze falls upon Olly, standing a few feet away from the window. His expression of guilt quickly turns into a sour sort of anger, making his narrow face look even more pinched than usual.

“I’ve got a right to have a smoke. The wall’s warm. The wall’s warm because of the stove.”

“I didn’t ask,” Sansa remarks.

“You’re looking at me like I caught you fucking,” he says, leaning forward on the last word, waiting to see how she’ll react.

It’s on the tip of her tongue to say fuck you, but there’s a good chance he’d misunderstand it, and the last thing she wants is to encourage him.

“You’re just a child,” she says instead, and sees him bristle.

He throws down his cigarette with a sneer. It doesn’t make him seem bigger - on the contrary. He’s never looked so much like a capricious boy.

“What would it take to make me a man in your eyes? Murder?”

“Don’t go killing anyone,” Sansa tells him sternly, her hand on the latch.

His voice echoes as she closes the window.

_“... be such a bitch...”_

 

 

 

 

They should have changed rooms days ago. Sansa is quite sure she’ll sleep better in a bed that isn’t her parents’, and though she doesn’t want to think about her reasons too much, she knows it has to do with her mother. It has to do with the hateful way her mother looked at Jon.

They haven't spoken about it, but Sansa can tell it makes Jon uncomfortable too. It's in the way he moves around the room, with a light tread and the occasional grimace. When they're in bed it seems to slip his mind, but whenever he gets up it’s as if her mother’s vengeful ghost were pursuing him, dogging his steps from the clothes cupboard to the door.

So she goes into Robb’s room after work, turns on the light and looks around. Of course it’ll always be _Robb’s room._ No amount of tidying up can change that. But there must be some things she can remove - she’s found some boxes in the garage, and actually she should probably do that next, empty the garage of some of the odds and ends of her childhood, so that she can put away Robb’s life - her parents’ lives... _This isn’t what I’m doing._

It’s impossible to live with a house full of ghosts. Even leaving aside how painful it is to move about the house and stumble upon objects that have remained in the exact same place since half of her family went missing (her mother’s hairbrush on the sink, her father’s hunting jacket hanging in the cupboard in the main room, Arya’s clothes in a heap on her bed, Robb’s muddy shoes under the porch, so stiff she could probably start using them as plant pots) - how is she supposed to keep the house running, with everything lying around and cluttering up the space?

Going over to Robb’s desk, she picks up the pile of carefully folded clothes. She sets it down on the bed, and starts sorting them out, one at a time.

The jeans are too long for Bran, but they’ll probably fit Jon. Him and Robb were of a height, as far as she can remember. The shirts she keeps for Bran. Soft worn t-shirts with band names she doesn’t know, one of which she’s pretty sure belongs to Theon, and plaid shirts with holes in them, the threads showing under the arms, most of them brown or black or green because Robb wasn’t much for variety in his clothing. There’s a few sweaters she can wear, including the one uncle Ben brought back from a visit to some eastern college, back when Robb had dreams.

She puts aside her practicality long enough to think of what it was that Robb wore the most, and settles on a dark green cable-knit sweater. This she sets aside for Theon.

The clothes are one thing, but there’s a lot of Robb’s belongings that she won’t be able to repurpose, and she spends a long time just going around it all, picking up carpentry magazines to arrange them in piles that she’ll probably end up burning, lifting an old banjo from the back of a cupboard and trying to remember if she ever saw Robb play it (she has no memory of that, but she remembers Jon having fun with it, some summer night around a fire in the backyard, scratching sounds if not an actual tune). Some things it’s easier to decide what to do with. The porn mags in a sunken cardboard box under the bed, the box still patterned with smiling moons and a sleepy-eyed sandman, those she’ll burn before the boys come home. There’s an old Bible in a drawer with a picture of Marg slipped between the pages, and she isn’t sure Marg will want it back, though the idea would have made her laugh - her flirtatious pose and her fancy underwear, pressed in between the pages of sacred texts. Sansa throws the Bible in one of the boxes along with Robb’s records and school books, without removing the picture.

As for the picture of Robb and her on the bedside table, she leaves it there along with the ashtray. The cigarettes remain in the drawer - two packs of them, Jon’s brand and Theon’s, with a few left in each.

Maybe that’s why it’s less difficult to appropriate Robb’s room than her parents: even when Robb lived in it, it was already _their_ room, all of the Stark children’s and Jon’s and Theon’s too. She couldn’t say whether the toy cars gathering dust under the bed are Rickon’s or Robb’s, and the same goes of the one book on the shelf, which could be Bran’s because Robb didn’t read and there’s a magician on the cover. Arya’s played in the cupboard so much that the spot where she used to sit is clear of any shoes or magazines or errant banjos, with an old cushion instead so that she doesn’t get a sore backside.

And of course it’d been the dogs’ room too. There's dog hair everywhere and Grey Wind’s blanket is still spread out below the window, with muddy footprints over it that could be Theon’s, and as she sorted out the room Summer came in and sat down upon it, watching her go about her business with his shiny, curious dog eyes.

_Yeah, we’ll be fine here,_ Sansa decides, looking around her at the now clean bedroom, the curtains freshly washed and the desk free of clothes or crumpled papers and the newly-made bed.

_We’ll be fine._

 

 

 

 

The dogs’ fretting warns her that something's wrong. Summer starts growling and Ghost comes in - she didn’t even know he was there, but suddenly he’s watching her from the doorway, his white fur standing on end around his neck and along his back.

“Okay,” Sansa mutters to steady herself, even as she steps back towards Robb’s desk, where she knows there’s a knife in the right drawer. “What’s going on?”

Then Shaggydog begins to bark out front of the house.

Sansa goes slowly, the knife tucked in the waistband of her jeans, beneath her sweater and with her hand around the grip. It’s dark outside, so she turns off the light in the living room before coming out of the corridor, and she goes to retrieve a rifle from the cupboard. Not the squirrel gun, but the one Ned used to hunt bigger game, deer and hogs.

In the front yard, Shaggy is still barking like mad. Sansa turns on the light on the porch, and waits a second before going out, trying to see who it might be.

She’s had time, during the walk from the room to the front door, to think about whether Davos and Mel would get involved if she were to be attacked by the Boltons or the remaining Freys. She’s fairly sure they wouldn’t, and she can’t really fault them for it. If a group of angry men descended on the Seaworths’ house, she’d probably run for the woods.

If it’s Daenerys, or Petyr, she can probably take them. She might not need the gun.

But it’s not Dany’s silver hair that she sees in the yellow halo of the porch light, or Petyr’s slender frame.

She steps on the porch, the rifle in her hands, and stares down the boy in the dirty jeans, with his shirt hanging over his narrow hips and the red patches on his neck where he’s scratched himself.

"Go gome.

She almost says it, because it’s hard to think of anything else when she looks at him. _Boy._ Not like she’d say it to Jon, flirty and soft and like she wants nothing more than to hold him against her, his tired eyes shut against her breast.

No, with Olly there’d be a hint of disdain. _Grow up._

He’s drunk, she can tell this much. He’s not exactly standing straight and his gaze is unfocused, jumping from her face to the ground to the wall of the house and ending somewhere in the vicinity of her chest. Maybe he’s got the power to see through fabric, because surely he can’t find much to ogle there, with Robb’s sweater covering what little curves she’s got.

“Thought you could use some company,” he says, swaying slightly on his feet.

“Shaggydog, stop,” Sansa says, and the dog quits barking. Somewhere off to her right, a light goes on in the Seaworths’ living room or kitchen, and Sansa raises a hand in case they’re watching, a way of saying, _I’ve got this._

“Girl alone...” Olly slurs.  
  
“I ain’t alone,” Sansa shrugs. “I got three dogs keeping me company, and Jon’s coming home soon.” 

“Does he get jealous?” Olly asks. “I used to think, nothing moves him, even when he kills someone he does it real calm. But that’s not what they say about what he did to the Bolton... the Bolton son. I heard he shot him a few more times than he had to. Dunno if I believe it or not.”

“You’ve never seen him angry, then. You’d better run home, boy. Don’t you have parents waiting for you?”

“They’re dead,” Olly spits.

“My folks are dead too,” Sansa says, giving him a pointed look. “You don’t see me going around threatening people...”

“I’m not threatening you. I’m just saying you should be careful. Shacking up with him... Didn’t go well the last time he had himself a girl, did it?”

Sansa is about to tell him off, maybe raise the gun and give him an incentive to scamper - back to the road or wherever he came from, and then she’ll retreat to Robb’s room with the dogs and wait for Jon and the boys to come home.

Except that something in his behavior has planted an idea in her head, and now she’s starting to think that she might be able to get the long and short of this story.

“You been drinking,” she says.  
  
After a moment’s consideration, she sets the rifle down.  
  
“I could use one myself.”

 

 

 

 

Olly eyes Ghost with suspicion as he follows her into the house, and the dog repays him in kind, his teeth close to the boy’s scrawny ankles.

“Rum, vodka, whiskey? It’s whiskey, right?”  
  
Olly looks impressed.  
  
“Yes."  
  
_You reeked of it that night at the mill._

“You can sit down,” she says, so he won’t be tempted to wander around the living room.

Olly sits himself on the couch, deep inside it, looking curiously at his surroundings. His eyes are bloodshot and a little watery.

Sansa pours two glasses and she brings them over along with the bottle.  
  
“Your hair,” Olly says, his hand hovering in space like he wishes he could touch it.

Sansa silently shifts her long red locks from one shoulder to the other, letting it tumble a little farther from his reach.

“It’s the same color,” he says, with a jerky nod at his glass where the whiskey slants from side to side like a bright, coppery syrup, catching the light. “That’s the most... Most beautiful girls.” He takes a sip. “Girls with the whiskey hair.”

Sansa thinks of Ygritte and her fiery tangle, as she looked down from her front porch at a bruised, battered girl, and she’d seemed unbreakable, as strong as the surrounding trees.

Except there’s always ways to kill a forest, as Sansa very well knows. Many ways to bring down a tree, to cut through the trunk or eat through the bark and turn it soft and black and powdery.

“She liked it? Ygritte. When you talked about her whiskey hair.”

Their eyes meet and a shiver runs down her spine - not so much fear as apprehension. Whatever there is to learn, she can tell she won’t like it.

“They took our land and they took our jobs and we should let them get away with it?” Olly's dark, drunken gaze is surprisingly sharp. “My family had a spot of land in this forest. Before the mill, just a few trees. When the trailers came, the law let them stay. Because there’d been some State fuck up...”

Sansa thinks she knows what he’s talking about. The story had been all over the papers at the time, though she’d been fairly young.

“That State plant that poisoned the water and the land, north from here?” she asks.

“Yeah. State sent them to live in our woods because they _felt bad._ Tormund and that girl and the rest of that trailer... trailer trash.”

_And then the mill was built, and they were evicted again,_ Sansa thinks. That’s a lot of moving around, over the course of a single generation.

“There’s some at the mill agreed with me,” Olly claims, defensive, as he takes a long swig of his whiskey. “How’d you have liked it, someone taking your land?”

Sansa takes a measured sip of her glass, letting the whiskey burn a trail of fire down her throat.

_It’s a mistake to think that any land belongs to anyone,_ she thinks. _You can fight for it. But at the end of the day... The land belongs to itself. We’re just passing through._

“I know everything you did to keep your house,” Olly says.

Sansa stays carefully silent, though her thoughts keep rushing on, pummeling her with realizations she could have done without at this point in time, sitting around a rickety coffee table with this angry boy, his bitterness like a corrosion.

_I thought it was about the house but it’s not. It’s about my brothers. Life comes first. The house... The woods... They’ll endure. I’ll hold on to it if I can. But it’s always been about the people, not the land. If I’d lost the boys... If I’d lost Jon... No house is worth me drowning another dead body in the swamps._

Olly leans forward between his knees, shoulders slightly heaving, and for a second she thinks he’ll retch, but he merely grips the edge of the table and brings the glass to his scowling mouth again.

“I understand,” she says, and takes another, careful sip. Then she goes to sit beside him, trying for a smile. Hopefully he’ll be too drunk to notice how stilted it is. “That feeling of being robbed... I get it.”

“You’re a lot kinder than she was. I wasn’t sure you’d be.”

His head drops between his shoulders again. When they begin to shake Sansa mistakes it for a laugh - reaches behind her for the knife, just in case - but he raises his head and she sees that he’s crying, his mouth twisted in an ugly sneer. He wipes his running nose on his sleeve.

“She didn’t... Didn’t have to pull a knife on me, did she?”

Slowly, Sansa pulls down her sweater, smoothing it over the knife. If she needed to, she could throw her glass at his head; it'd be enough to make him lose his focus for a while, maybe even to knock him out, if she aimed well. She hopes it won't come to that.

“Sometimes,” she says, “you try talking to people, and they won’t listen. She was a wild one, Ygritte, wasn’t she?”

She can't help but think of that day again, Ygritte sitting her down and pushing that mug of coffee in her hands, with the sugar cube floating at the surface, already drenched brown. Giving her a swift smile, because she smiled like Jon smiles now, in fragments, though her smiles were bright and joyful. Jon’s aren’t. Muscle memory in his case, rather than happiness.

Ygritte had listened to her. She’d scolded her for taking a beating in silence because that was her way, that was who she was, but she’d listened all the same, and Sansa had briefly resented them all, Ygritte and Jon and Ghost, for the house with its sun-kissed roof surrounded by the whispering pines, for the sweet coffee and the rough, well-worn comforts of a life that might never be her own.

“I wanted her to admit what she’d done,” Olly mumbles. “She made fun of me. She laughed.”

Sansa pictures Ygritte, standing on the front porch or leaning against the banister and laughing in the boy’s face. _Why should I care that you’ve lost your land? It’ll do you good, you’ll see. Keep being tossed around and after a while you’ll get that you ain’t losing anything, because it wasn’t yours to begin with. Try to drive that into that thick skull of yours, boy._

“She shouldn’t have laughed,” Sansa says, in as soft a voice as she can muster.

Ghost has come to join her, silently edging around the room before he comes to sit at her feet. It doesn’t seem like Olly’s noticed him. Switching her glass to her right hand, Sansa brings the left down to rest upon the dog’s head, drawing comfort from his steady weight against her legs.

“I didn’t... I wasn’t gonna shoot her,” Olly says, with a hiccup. “I wanted her to fucking get it. I wasn’t gonna shoot. I didn’t mean to.”

Here her imagination comes up blank. The glass hobbles in her hand. There's only so much truth she can get out of him, and so she'll never find out what he really told Ygritte. Was it a complaint about his lost land or a dirty, drunken come-on that Ygritte wouldn’t let slide? Did he plan it ahead, waiting for the moment when he knew she’d be alone - like he waited for Sansa to be alone? What did he have in mind then, what does he have in mind now? Is he looking for a shoulder to cry on? Possibly more?

In all likelihood, he doesn’t know himself.

“It must have been terrible,” Sansa says.

Olly swallows the rest of his whiskey and holds out the glass for more. She tips the bottle over the glass, her face carefully blank.

“It was,” he says. “I was just... I couldn’t stay, could I?”

“Where did you go?”

It hurts just to think of it: Jon coming home to the sight of a body on his front porch. Running up the steps, to check, although he must have had an inkling there was nothing he could do. Something in the angle of her legs, in the still drapery of the hair masking her face. The horror on his, like the bark has been torn from the tree, exposing the tender wood beneath. Standing above the body and then crouching, kneeling, falling beside her.

“The woods,” Olly says. “The mill. Some of the guys agreed with me. That it wasn’t fair. That Mormont shouldn’t have hired strangers. Everyone knew it was Snow’s fault. It was Snow’s fault,” he spits again, like he’s not only assigning blame for Mormont’s hiring policies but also for the loss of his land, and Ygritte’s death, and whatever came after that.

“Because it was Jon's idea to hire Tormund and Ygritte and the others at the mill?”

“Yeah.”

“And so they shot him.”

“Didn’t die, did he?” Olly scoffs.

_They shot him, and you killed Ygritte, and still you’re all working alongside each other at the mill like nothing ever happened._

“What happened to them?” Sansa asks. “The men who shot Jon.”

She’s got a pretty good idea, though. She’s heard enough, from enough people. There was Thorne, who used to be a foreman at the mill, and whom they’d found strung up in a tree...

“Thorne was a good man,” Olly says. “It’s things you’ve gotta know, and girls like you, you don’t seem to get it. How to make the... the difference between...”

“The murders that are lawful and the murders that ain’t? A murder’s a murder. Sooner or later you’ve gotta atone for it. You tell me then. What’s a ‘girl like me’ like?”

Olly gives her a bleary-eyed look.

“Pretty. You’re pretty and you don’t think. You go for the wrong men.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m not a boy,” Olly says, loudly, and the glass drops from his hand, rolls onto the floor and away under the table.

He stares at his empty hand, and then makes to reach for the bottle, missing it by good three inches.

“I know you’re not,” Sansa's voice is soothing as she pushes the bottle further out of his reach. “Men are allowed to be tired, too. Come, get up, I’ll drive you home.”

He leans onto her shoulder as she guides him out of the house and towards her car, his gangly body a dead weight against her side. At one point he tries to get a whiff of her hair or neck, but his nose bumps into her shoulder and his head rolls forward as she gives him a jolt, forcing him back onto his feet.

“Sixteen,” he mumbles. “I’m old enough.”

The wooden grip of the knife digs into Sansa's back with every step. She wouldn’t use it, not unprovoked, but it takes some strength not to pull it out anyways, to try to put some fear into him like she did with Petyr - Jon's bitter voice like an echo in her head, _Dirt I’ve got on him, I could bury him twenty feet deep._

And yet he hadn’t. Because of Olly’s age, probably. Because he underestimated the threat the boy posed, maybe. That’s what she’d thought, too, after all. That Olly was just a boy, that a boy didn’t warrant the same caution as a man would. She’d never have let Ramsay inside her house, feeding him whiskey to try and get a confession out of him.

At the heart of the matter lies this truth that all men are still boys, and that in these mountains, the men and the boys alike are capable of naivety and cruelty in equal measure.

Olly falls asleep on the ride back to his place and it’s a relief, not having to talk to him anymore, or to put up an understanding front. She’d let Ghost climb into the backseat and every so often she’ll glance up in the mirror and catch a glimpse of his bright, watchful eyes. Her mind spins in circles as she tries to decide what to do. Denounce Olly? But how to do so without dragging to light the rest of it, Jon killing Thorne and what Olly saw - her and Jon and Theon unearthing Robb’s body in the Stark woods? Olly probably couldn't do much with that information, but she’d rather not take the risk, all the same. She’s not about to revive her feud with the Boltons just to take down a murderous little fool.

Olly lives on the outskirts of town, sharing a house with Grenn and Pyp. She doesn’t wait to see if anyone will come out to get him as he stumbles onto the icy pavement. The moment he’s out, she lets out a sigh of relief, reverses the car and heads home.

 

 

 

 

Jon is standing on the porch by the time she gets there, smoking in the rectangle of light shed by the open front door.

She climbs the steps with Ghost at her side, comes to stand in front of Jon with her hands deep in her pockets and her breath rising white between them, her cheeks smarting from the cold.

“You okay?” he asks.

What comes out next is breathless and mostly unintended, a confession brought about by the tension of the past few hours and the taste of whiskey still thick on her tongue.

“I love you.”

Jon raises his eyebrows, and then remembers to smile, furtive and soft, like he’s not quite sure what he’s doing, like he doesn’t want to scare her away.

“Yeah?”

_But you knew,_ Sansa thinks, a little desperately. _Of course you knew. Don’t act like this is a surprise._

“Way too much,” she says, as his hand comes up to stroke her cheek, and he moves in - the smile still here, still soft enough that it makes her ache - and kisses her for a long time, until the sinister drive has receded from her memory, taking with it all that sickening talk of women dying at the hands of jealous men.

There’s only Jon’s mouth and the low sound he makes - affection, amusement - as he brushes the hair back from her face.

“You been drinking?” he asks.


End file.
